Burien resident Marco Spani had quite a fish tale to tell me the other day.I thought I would pass it on to my readers:

OK Jerry, here’s the story.

My daughter, Jesann and her boyfriend, Nate were visiting from southern California and we were fishing on Labor Day weekend. We hadn’t had a bite all morning, then at about 8:30 we got one on.

Jesann began reeling in the fish and she could tell it was a good size salmon. When she got it up to the boat she saw the flasher, then the fish, then right behind the fish was a sea lion!

The fish must have figured that out too because he took off like a rocket, went about 50 yards without stopping. The reel was singing! At that point Jesann handed me the rod and I started reeling in as fast as I could.

There were now two sea lions converging on our fish, slowly moving toward the boat as I was reeling him in. I yelled at the sea lions every time they came to the surface. I don’t know if that helped. I finally got the fish back to the boat.

Jesann netted him in a hurry and she got him out of the water. A beautiful 10-pound silver. The sea lions were looking at us from about 30 feet away, looking as forlorn as sea lions can look.

Jesann put the fish in a plastic bag and hid it under the seat, just in case they had any ideas. We slowly putted back to our buoy around the corner and one of the sea lions followed us the whole way back, then hung around my buoy for a while.

Since then I’ve been fishing on the north side of TTP (Three Tree Point) two times, and both times as soon as I start fishing a sea lion starts following me, staying a short distance behind the boat. He followed me all the way down, and when I turned, he turned, and he followed me all the way back.

I wasn’t going to catch any fish with a sea lion in close pursuit, so now I fish at Point Robinson!

Marco Spani