First and foremost, fish are food
Washington angler thinks the thrill of fishing is in the eating
When it comes to fishing, Larry Mulligan lives by one credo: If a fish isn't worth eating, it isn't worth catching.
The 52-year-old Fox Island, Wash., resident likes to catch trophy fish as much as the next guy, but would never spend his hard earned time and money chasing a fish just to hang it on the wall.
"Trophy fish are simple bonuses that happen while I'm trying to put fish in the box," he says. "First and foremost, fish are food."
It's not that he couldn't afford to fish for fishing's sake.
Mulligan is a successful real estate salesman — at least as successful as any real estate salesman can be in the current market.
The trouble for Mulligan is that he really loves to eat some of the Pacific Ocean fish that live right down the road from his home, and his 22-foot boat is not quite big enough to get to the places where many live.
So a couple times a year, he hires Jim Richeson at the La Push, Wash., Marina to guide him to the fish he loves.
Richeson runs Top Notch Ocean Charters, LLC, and has proven time and again that he knows where the fish live in the Ocean outside La Push.
That's important to Mulligan since he entirely expects to return from his annual salmon trip with Top Notch with a limit of silver salmon filets for the grill and king salmon steaks for the smoker.
Like any good charter captain, Richeson relishes the challenge and always delivers.
Pulling away from the marina on Mulligan's most recent trip, the Pacific was uncharacteristically calm, but shrouded in fog as usual.
Weaving around the rock islands that frame La Push, Richeson hit open water and ran full tilt 11 miles until cutting the engines and instructing his clients to grab a rod.
Mulligan would never spring for the high-end gear Richeson uses, but was happy to borrow his Loomis rods and Penn reels for a day, anyway.
With no downriggers, outriggers or planer boards on Richeson's boat, it was clear he didn't intend to troll.
Instead, Richeson handed Mulligan a headless, frozen eight-inch herring and told him to hook it once and drop it over the side.
"I love mooching for salmon so much more than trolling," Mulligan said as he lowered the bait into the 200-foot, dark ocean.
As the herring helicoptered out of sight behind the four-ounce, crescent-shaped weight, Mulligan exposed some of his latent trophy fisherman tendencies.
"Watch my first fish be the biggest king of the day," he predicted.
After the bait dropped 80 feet, it was time to start cranking it back to the surface. Any deeper and every single herring would be taken by line-breaking dogfish or bait-stealing bottom feeders.
On the second drop, Mulligan felt a tap, let it go and waited for the pickup. As soon as he set the hook, his line started angling toward the surface until a 12-pound silver salmon broke water and jumped five feet into the air, hook in mouth.
After a fight that seemed too long and hard for a 12-pound fish, Richeson leaned over the boat and delivered the bad news.
"That's a wild silver," he said almost apologetically. "You can clearly see the adipose fin intact, which means it isn't from a hatchery and must be released."
Looking like a dog whose bloody bone was just snatched from his mouth, Mulligan watched as Richeson reached down and let the fish swim free.
Within minutes, it was clear it didn't matter if a couple fish had to be released.
Countless hatchery silver salmon, king salmon, pink salmon and humpies were mixed in with the wild fish and were no less eager to eat a headless herring.
Though it wasn't the first or the biggest, Mulligan eventually got his king. It weighed 20 pounds and bent the rod for more than five minutes before finally succumbing to the net.
The fishing action was nonstop for everyone on the boat, but didn't deter Mulligan from pausing periodically to look in the box to see what he would be taking home.
"I need to stop on the way home to buy a new smoker," Mulligan announced to everyone on the boat. "I want to start that king tonight."
"In the meantime, I need to stop and buy some fish from a local since I can't wait for mine to be done," he added for emphasis.
The only other bit of business he had to take care of before leaving the dock was to talk about booking with Richeson again next year.
Book a LaPush salmon fishing trip with Jim Richeson by visiting his website: www.TopNotchOcean Charters.com or by calling him at (360) 374 2660.
