Peter Tarabochia, of Burien, hooked a big King salmon Friday, July 22nd off Pt. Dalco fishing with his father Don and friend Jim Holly of Fircrest, left. Trolling off Pt. Dalco in less than 50 feet of water, he hooked the massive fish around 9 a.m. Hoping for 10-pounder, he quickly realized he had a much bigger fish seeing it belly roll near the surface before making a dash for the bottom. The hatchery fish pulled his flasher/spoon set up down to deep water for nearly 15 minutes. Tarabochia will proudly hang a bent fishing lure on the wall. Plans to mount the fish are pending. The lucky angler's triumph weighed in at 42 pounds.
(Editor's Note: Burien angler Peter Tarabochia has quite a fish tale to tell-and it's all true.)
Myself, my dad Don Tarabochia (Fircrest, WA), and our friend Jim Holly (Fircrest, WA) were all fishing on my dad's boat. Fishing had been generally slow around the Tacoma area at the time, and as the morning passed we were hoping for even a cookie-cutter 12-15 lb. king.
We had a couple other takedowns, but nothing that stuck. In short, the action was slow but it was a beautiful morning on the water.
While trolling the area we saw acres of herring flipping around and marked huge baitballs on the fishfinder. In fact, there was so much bait you sometimes start to wonder if the fish are distracted and overfed by it.
In any case, I decided to switch to using a new spoon I had just purchased -- a particular pattern that caught my eye in the store and seemed to have a nice lifelike herring look to it. I set that rod at only about 45 feet down to mimic the depth of the baitfish.
Not long after trolling this set up, about 9 a.m. my rod started dancing. At first it was pulsing out away from the boat, and knew I had him hooked but couldn't really gauge his size because he was running up towards the surface.
Then a ways off the back the boat, the fish rolled. We didn't see him, but I could tell by the swirl of water he pushed that it was the type of roll big Kings will sometimes do.
Instantly he dove deep, and line was just peeling off the spool. Obviously at that point I knew we had something special, but was still just picturing it to be a hard fighting Chinook in the mid/upper 20's because I would have never imagined a fish the size he turned out to be.
I go into every season hoping a 30-pounder will highlight the season, and wasn't thinking about shattering that mark that morning. After his deep run, I worked him back to the boat in a give and take manner, and the flasher finally came into view followed by the fish.
Immediately we could see his broad back in the green water, but not until he leaned a bit and revealed his thick silver side did we find ourselves completely shocked. I even thought the light refraction might have been magnifying him.
Fortunately the netting was a straightforward affair, and after about a 20-minute fight in total, we soon had him on the deck.
This isn't the largest King I've caught having been able to spend time fishing up in Alaska and Canada where the fish often run larger. But relatively speaking, this one was maybe my most memorable fish given its sheer size for south Puget Sound and being able to catch him right here in our home waters.
