Pele's Bounty

Our trip to the Big Island of Hawai'i, while short, was packed with fun. As I had expected, much of the coastline was rocky. Unfortunately, much of it was a little too rocky and fairly inaccessible for fishing.

I did fish in a few sheltered harbours, including Hilo Bay, where I hooked a hungry lizard fish right before sunset.

The Big Island

I've been fishing for bonefish with my new reel. As with fly fishing, there are two basic techniques: sight-fishing and blind-casting. I've tried sight-fishing but my lures are too light to cast well. My birthday is at the end of this month and I have my fingers crossed for some bonefish jigs that are a bit heavier. I spent a couple of hours blind-casting today with no luck, but towards the end of the day I switched things up and managed to catch a small papio in the shallows. 
Papio are fast and always hungry and this little fish got me excited for our upcoming trip to the Big Island. Naturally, our priority is checking out Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, but I'm confident there will be a little bit of time to do some fishing. The Big Island of Hawaii is geologically much younger than Oahu so it's coastlines are steep and often rocky. Not ideal for bonefish, but possibly great for papio.

Pennsive Angling

I didn't post last month. I didn't catch any fish, either, though I did go fishing, once. The lack of activity is due partly to general busyness, but also to a nagging rotator cuff injury. Even though I hurt myself on dry land, the whole affair has made me re-examine my fishing style. Shoulder injuries are becoming more commonly recognized among fly anglers. It appears that the repetitive high arm casting motion makes us prone to pinching tendons.
I am a confident fly caster in freshwater, with small flies and casts up to about thirty feet but when it comes to salt water fly fishing, especially here in Hawaii, the flies are heavy, the wind can be fierce and distance does matter. Moreover, a strategy of longer and more frequent casts greatly increase the odds of catching fish. For a mediocre caster like myself, this is a perfect recipe for shoulder injury.
I have always believed that spinning reels are the ideal tool for long, repetitive casting and so I wondered: can I replicate that style of salt water fly fishing using conventional spinning tackle? The answer seems to be yes. The major difficulty lies in casting a very small lure as far as possible. The best way to accomplish this is by using a very light line on a very good reel. I knew that a braided line would be very lightweight yet still strong enough to handle even big saltwater gamefish, but what reel to put it on? My friend Kirk, who swears by Penn reels, referred me the site of spinning reel aficionado, Alan Hawk. From his lists of "best general use saltwater reels" I selected the sturdy Penn Battle BTL4000 and loaded it up with some 15lb test TUFLINE.
Now it's time to go catch some fish...

Tide Pool Treasures

Big treasures, small pools

The smell of sunscreen and squid

An island morning

Bristling red and gold

Perched precisely; poised for attack

Too late, it's a hook!

 

 Salty and crunchy

Waving up at the surface

The algae beckons

A tug on the line

It's a tiny Christmas Wrasse!

A gift all year round

Shiny and patient

Hiding deep upon the reef

Waiting for high tide

Burrowing through stone

An indomitable spirit

That's the urchin's life

 

Black-Ops

I met up with Kirk sometime before sunrise on an unspecified date and headed off to do some top-secret fishing. Our mission was to attempt to make contact with a very large, very elusive Hawaiian bonefish: The O'io.
After a supply stop for coffee we went in search of a shady character known as "Mr. Crabs" who would we were hoping would help us locate The O'io. We cast a wide net and soon flushed Mr. Crabs from his hiding place. Our plan was to lure The O'io in with a trusted intermediary. Mr. Crabs initially balked at being used as bait but our methods were very persuasive.
From the staging area we headed warily into to AO. Conditions seemed favorable and right away we saw signs that The O'io was in the area. I was bringing Mr. Crabs back in for a status update when the ambush hit. Mr. Crabs never had a chance. The battle was furious and at one point I was certain we weren't going to make it but somehow we did.

Our best sources indicate that The O'io weighs in around 20 pounds. Intelligence analysts estimate that this fish might be somewhere north of 10 but that The O'io is still out there.

The Checklist

There is a long list of strange and unpleasant interactions one can have with animals. Most people can relate to being stung by a bee and many of us who were curious children share the experience of snake or lizard bites.
Over the years I been attacked by a sheep, stung by an urchin, charged by an elephant and speared by a sting ray. I am proud and slightly disturbed to say that I can now check another item off my list. Yesterday I was bitten by a moray eel.
Tara and I checked out a new beach in the late afternoon. The tide was pretty high and much of the sand was wet so we found a seat on a narrow seawall. I rigged up a light spinning rod with a piece of squid and let it sit in the shallows about 30 feet from shore. There were schools of baitfish moving along the wall and at one point we saw the telltale splashes of a predator chasing down a meal. Finally I felt a tug and quickly set the hook. Different fish feel very different on the end of a line and I could tell right away this was not a papio or any other of the reef fish I had been hoping for.
Every eel I have ever caught has swallowed or bitten the hook in such a way that I could do no more than reel it in quickly and cut my line as close to it's sharp teeth as I've dared. This time I could see that the little eel had been hooked right in the lip and I immediately decided to try to remove the hook. Morays have a unique survival strategy. As soon as I lifted it from the water the eel curled itself into a wildly undulating ball. This may be a good strategy if one is grabbed by a crab but it is a poor plan when attached to the end of a fishing line. By the time I set the critter on the sea wall it was tangled hopelessly in a web of monofilament.

 

Using my forceps I first removed the hook and then cut away the tight loops of line until the eel was free. Now I was faced with the problem of returning the now loose and extremely irritated eel from the seawall to the water.

I decided to use the same technique I would use for a small snake - grip firmly behind the head and move quickly. The flaw in my plan lay in the fact that eels are more slippery than snakes. My "behind the head" grip instantly became a "somewhere in the middle" grip and then the eel had my knuckle in it's jaws. There was some painful tearing as I "released" my catch and watched it swim away.

Mission accomplished!

Spring Break Part 2: Settling Score

On the Monday morning after our weekend of semi-successful fishing, Tara and I borrowed a car and drove back out to the lake for a last shot at some carp.

The water was deserted and we arrived at the perfect time, that mid-morning window when the sun is high but the wind is still. Right away I saw a feeding carp, but my cast got no reaction, the fish just moved slowly off into deeper water. 

I made my way slowly along the shore of the small bay, scanning carefully for fish feeding amongst the submerged rocks. I spotted a cloud of mud and froze. Soon I saw the back of a nice fish rising slowly out of the murk. I waited until it began to swim lazily away and laid a cast alongside, placing the fly just ahead and to the side of it's nose. The carp scooted forward, paused ever so briefly, and then my line went tight!

A few minutes later, on the far side of the bay I watched a big fish that I had stalked so carefully flee in a puff of mud. The sunshine was warm and I was still riding the high from my first fish so rather than move on I just stopped to enjoy the morning for a moment. Some distance away a shadow was gliding through the water. As it made it's way slowly towards me I watched the shadow resolve into a nice little carp. When it came within reach I dropped my fly in front of it and was immediately rewarded with a bite.

Spring Break Part 1: Out of my Jurisdiction

This month, Tara and I enjoyed a little Spring-break trip to visit some friends back in Nashville. Taking advantage of the unreasonably warm weather I dragged our gracious hosts out to some of my old fishing haunts.

I was hoping to get a shot at some carp but they proved scarce. Luckily, Justin found a sweet spot and we spent the morning catching crappie with our carp flies.

The following afternoon we hit a different spot. I kept my eye out for any stray carp but mostly we prospected along the shore for Springtime bass. Before we had made it half a mile I had lost half a dozen flies in the rocks, with only a solitary sunfish to show for it. Justin had lost about as many lures, but he managed to save the day with a couple of nice bass.

Next Time: Settling Score

The Bonefish Enigma

Lately I've been fishing with a light spinning rod, sight-casting a small white jig to bonefish on the flats. The first few days after a week of stormy weather were slow. One morning I saw only one bonefish in three hours.
Two days ago I headed out on a rising tide. The trade winds had waned to 15 mph and the sunny conditions promised great visibility. Right away I spotted fish, lots of fish. There were big bones feeding alone or in pairs and I saw a shoal of 10 or 15 smaller fish cruising the sand just off the beach.
The jig did not perform as well as I had hoped. It was both too heavy and too light. Many fish spooked when the lure hit the water, even when I cast 10 or 20 feet ahead of them. On the other hand it was too light to cast into the wind with any accuracy. The weather forecast indicated that the good fishing would likely continue so I decided to try again the following day.

This time I left the light tackle at home. I brought not only a heavier rod but I also packed a net, which I used to capture a couple of crabs as I walked along the beach towards the reef where I had seen so many fish the day before. Again, I saw lots of bonefish, but instead of casting to them I picked my targets based on topography. I cast my crabs into sandy depressions or deeper channels that might attract bonefish as they moved across the shallows. Fishing with bait can be a tedious waiting game so in anticipation I packed my ipod. In the fourth or fifth such spot, with Florence and the Machine in my ears, a bonefish grabbed my bait and headed for the horizon. It's hard to believe a five pound fish could be so strong. Had I hooked it on lighter tackle, or even with my fly rod there is a good chance it would have escaped, but with a heavy drag and 40 lb braided line I brought the fish to hand, removed the hook and watched it swim off strongly.
Needless to say, I had forgotten the camera at home.

                                                                                                                                                   

Hail Hawaii

My failure to post recently is directly related to my failure to go fishing recently.
I have been doing some fishing research. Specifically I've been reading about catching bonefish on ultra-light spinning gear and about a week ago I really got the itch to get out and try some of these techniques. That's about when this happened (from Jeff Masters' WunderBlog):

A waterspout made landfall on the Hawaiian island of Oahu Friday morning on the east shore town, becoming a rare Hawaiian tornado as it moved through the towns of Lanikai and Kailua... The same storm also brought golf ball sized hail raining down for about 45 minutes on Oahu. The islands have seen intense rains... Rainfall amounts over the past week have exceeded three feet in some locations.

The storms created a flood of muddy runoff that churned around the island and ruined a lot of vacations. It also marred the waves at a Women's pro surfing contest on the North Shore (photo from Surf News Network):

I assumed that the presence of so much fresh water would temporarily ruin fishing conditions on the flats and so a I stayed home, twiddling my thumbs and checking the weather forecast every two minutes. Conditions have improved somewhat and I was debating whether or not to wait another day when I saw the most recent post on the Nervous Water Hawaii Blog. Apparently, muddy water does not ruin the fishing conditions. I guess that settles the debate. I'm going fishing!

Bearded Fish

Tara and I took our handpoles out to Hawaii Kai yesterday. We often take friends or visitors fishing at this spot which means I usually spend a lot of time tying and re-tying knots for people. This time it was just the two of us, so after a quick picnic on the sand we were onto the reef in search of some fish.

A low tide and small surf meant we could easily access the best spots. I hooked a number of fish including a nice moano. Moano are a type of goatfish, so named for the pair of sensitive barbels under the chin which the fish uses to search the sand for food. These long, colorful "whiskers" make goatfish seem especially expressive and they are one of my favorite fish to watch while snorkeling or diving.
Tara also had some good luck, pulling several hawkfish from a single deep hole:

We have been taking advantage of the Winter vacation to spend lots of time outdoors, fishing, body-surfing, hiking. We also had plans to do some surfing before Tara goes back to work but since she won't be swimming for a couple of weeks I guess we'll just have to keep on fishing!