It was a day of the good, the bad, and the ugly. Fishing was good, we hooked three kings, had two good hits without hookups, and released several shakers. The first king was at West Point on the morning tide change, a nice wild fish released in good health. We went over to Jeff Head about 9:00 and hooked two more kings. The bad was the seal that grabbed both fish. On the first fish we battled the seal for about 20 minutes. It had the fish by the head and finally let go of it near the boat and we were able to net it before he could grab it again. It was a 14 pound hatchery fish so it went in the box, missing half of its head. The problem was that the missing half was the half where it was hooked and now the seal was hooked so I clamped down and broke the line, the hotspot and hootchie stayed with the seal. I switched to a rod rigged with a coho killer spoon and in less than ten minutes hooked another nice fish. We looked around for seals, didn't see any and settled in for a nice king fight. This rod had an old Shimano Moocher single action reel so the expectation was to have some fun landing the fish. After about a minute the character of the battle changed and it was seal on. I can say without reservation that a single action reel is not what you want when you have a big seal (300 pounds) on the other end of the line. After at least twenty minutes of chasing the seal with the boat we had it up to the surface several times and could see the fish in its mouth. The ugly was the condition of the fish, it was badly torn up so we decided to let the seal have it and broke off. Much to our surprise we only lost the spoon and when we reeled up the dodger, the hotspot and hootchie we lost the first time was tangled in the leader. I would have rather had the fish but the gear recovery was a consolation prize. We were fishing 80 feet deep at West Point and 120 feet deep at Jeff Head.
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