Sea Anemone

This morning I learned a new peril of fishing at low tide. The low tide today was –0.8. What that means in practical terms is that the tide line is now at subtidal level, exposing things like sea urchins, sea stars, and sea anemones. (The tide will continue to become even lower for the remainder of the week, making it a great time for exploring the beaches.)

I went out to fishing and caught and released a couple of small Dollies. I was doing well keeping the lure out of snags and rocks. And then it happened again: Only a few seconds after casting out and starting to reel back in the lure hit something that wouldn’t let go. It was still in the deeper waters so at first I thought perhaps the lure had caught a huge kelp. I tugged and tugged without it releasing. I thought it was rather odd: did the lure sink that quickly or was there an isolated shallow spot where it got caught? I pulled and tugged, moved around and pulled. And then I felt some response to the tugging, if ever so slowly. I continued to pull and I could feel continued movement in response. That was good news. I really didn’t want to cut the line and lose another lure. I continued pulling and pulling until I could see that there was something moving along the floor of the sea. I thought maybe it was a huge clump of seaweed. That is, until I finally got it dragged up onto the beach. That’s when I saw that I had caught a sea anemone firmly attached to a small rock. (More precisely, it had probably caught the lure when it touched one of the feelers.) It took some pulling to extract the hook out of it, but it did finally come out. I’m not sure how much the rock weighed, but I’m pretty confident that it weighed at least as much as a good sized salmon and now I know that my tackle and knots should hold up to a salmon.