Seal or Slab????

Kristo

Kristo

Active Member
I was out at South Arm on the weekend fishing sockeye gear and had a typical pink/sockeye hit on one of lines.
Felt like a small fish but all of a sudden line started screaming.
My initial thought was seal...so I palmed the real to try and slow it down and applied more and more pressure until the hook popped out.
Now I have a niggling thought that is haunting me...........maybe it was a very large spring....which is a little disturbing....of course I will never know.
How do you tell the diff?
How do you really experienced guys deal with this situation?
I keep telling myself it was a seal ............Im pretty sure::rolleyes:
 
If your first thought was that you initially had a sockeye / pink on.. was probably a seal.
:) Don't torture yourself!! lol
 
Lastweek i hit what i thought was a small spring or pink so i was showing the girl i was with how to reel ect. The thing suddenly took off so i thought it was a seal. Chased it and after a few min realized it was just a fish. Only a 21 lb spring. Its often hard to tell.
 
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A friend foul hooked a six foot shark at Swiftsure on the dorsal. He thought it was the spring of a lifetime - for about 20 minutes.
 
kelly said:
Lastweek i hit what i thought was a small spring or pink so i was showing the girl i was with how to reel ect. The thing suddenly took off so i thought it was a seal. Chased it and after a few min realized it was just a fish. Only a 21 lb spring. Its often hard to tell.
Click to expand...

YOu are a nice guy! hahaha
 
Yeah nope not a doggy at that size. In the QCI / Haida Gwaii or whatever they're called now, I did see Blue sharks, and Salmon sharks with my buddy when we were out a couple times, so likely either species is possible. Salmon sharks can actually get pretty large.
 
Hey Chris I have had many soft bites that turned out to be good sized springs, had a 20 last week that hit and was hard to tell if it was a sockeye or spring started to come in pretty easy and then was thinking nothing big when all the sudden the thing took off like a run away train . I thought I was getting sealed as one was lurking close by , I Had to slam the drag and was getting ready to chase when it started to come back up and eventually it surfaced and I new we had I good spring. Turned out to be a nice 20 pound red just south of the bell. Funny thing is you never seem to forget the ones that got away.
 
Well any seal I have ever hooked or taken my fish has done almost the same thing. One really hard run, followed by a pause, followed by a second hard run. After this the seal pops up and has a look at you. Usually your fish is hanging out both sides of the seals mouth so all you see is eyes, whiskers and a nice fish!

So the next time this happens hang on and make sure! Seals breathe air if you have a seal it is going to come up. The harder they swim the quicker they need air so I wouldn not imagine a seal (especially one with a nice fish in its mouth) would stay down very long. The biggest spring I ever hooked looked like a shaker tapping the rod tip. I picked the rod up, got tight to the downrigger, felt the ticking and told my girlfriend we have one on come take it. I then popped the pin off and quickly changed my toon as the fish took off. She let me keep the fish and we lost it at the boat because she wasn't able to clear the downriggers and I thought just doing my side was enough. I should have given her the rod and got the boat ready we would have probably got it in if it couldn't go around the downrigger wire.
 
As Jockey states, seals breathe air. Any time I have lost one to a seal - which is more than I like to think about - they have shown their silly mug rather quickly and displayed how proud they were to have my salmon in their mouth; like a dog with a bone.
 
Good info there guys.
Next time I will alter my technique.
I have no idea why you think im torturing myself.:D
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I thought I had a tyee on in rivers inlet this year. The son of a ***** fought exactly like a Chinook, I was yelling at all the boats to get away. What came up? A monster ling. That ******* had me fooled.
 
I had a fish hit so hard on the WCVI last Monday that I thought I had the fish of a lifetime on my hands - it broke the rod holder lose and nearly got away with my rod. When I finally got it to the boat, it was "only" around 20 lbs. I still wonder what that fish had been feeding on!
 
I had about a 12 pound (No im not exagerating) Pink on yesterday that I swore was a spring. took about 150 ft of line heavy heavy heavy, Then dead weight. Hmm must be really big I was thinking...Nope Pink hooked infront of the tail. Lets just say took over 20 mins to land it. I was pretty dissapointed when I saw it. But i will take the adrenaline rush of thinking its a spring anyday!


-Steve
 
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