Wednesday, Jun. 10, 2009

"The Sea Lion Attack" (w/ photos)

By Eric Degerman, sportstricities.com

If you saw the Outdoors page on the back of the sports section in Saturday's Herald, you likely were wowed by a couple of photos that outdoors editor Kevin McCullen chose for the user-generated "Your Adventures" feature.

On April 2, Steve Palmer of Richland snapped the shots of a remarkable fish tale on the Columbia River -- a sea lion dining on a salmon that was on the line of his friend, Dave Phillips, who also is from Richland.

Their fishing guide, Todd Brenton of the appropriately named Brenton Outdoor Adventures, remembered that morning near Portland International Airport.

"It was our first fish of the day, and (Phillips) said, 'I think I've got one," recalled Brenton, whose business is based in Brush Prairie. "I said, 'No, you just hooked a sea lion.'"

Brenton said when he was maneuvering the boat, the sea lion realized the salmon was connected to their boat. The "thief" wasn't going to give up the fish though. The sea lion simply flipped the fish and ate the spring chinook as if it was a kabob.

Palmer supplied photos that back up the story, one showing Phillips holding only the head of the salmon. Brenton is the background with the empty hook.

It's not unusual, Brenton said, to have sea lions dueling the anglers because both know where the salmon are running and the sturgeon can be had -- especially around Bonneville Dam. Usually it's the sea lion, not the fisherman, who gets the fish.

"I've had about nine or 10 of those this year," Brenton said. "You could say it's almost an every-day occurrence while fishing for spring chinook, only this time the sea lion let us keep the head."

Still, it was a trip that produced more than just a good story.

"We had five guys on the boat, and we kept four (salmon) that day," Brenton said. "One guy upfront had to release a fish, and then (Phillips lost his), so we were only one fish short of our limit that day -- due to a sea lion attack."

At that point, I think that I heard Brenton chuckle.

Brenton and his wife both are guides. Their services include elk and deer hunting, as well as trips to Alaska, but the bulk of their business is fishing the Columbia from Astoria to John Day.

Tuesday's phone interview with Brenton got interrupted as one of his clients staged a 40-minute fight with a 400-pound sturgeon below Bonneville Dam. Indeed, Brenton seems to know what he's talking about because it sounded as if there was at least one client who got into a fish during my seven-minute call.

"Last year, we were fishing (for salmon) near Tillamook, and there was a 46-pounder we hooked that a sea lion had," he said. "We got the whole fish back, but there's only maybe one out of 50 times when you can rescue (the fish)."

I'll take a guess here that by "rescuing" the fish, Brenton meant his client — not the sea lion — went home with the salmon.

If you have photos of your outdoors adventures, please send them to outdoors.tricityherald@gmail.com.

For more regional coverage of the outdoors, visit our Outdoors site on SportsTriCities.com.