The Secret of Chan's Reef

I have been fishing with my friend Kirk for more than a decade.  During that time we have fished all over Oahu; on sandbars, reefs, flats, docks, streams, lakes, bays and islands.  We have caught everything from tiny native gobies to hammerhead sharks.  Just before New Year's I had a chance to join Kirk for an afternoon of papio fishing.

Papio are an ultra-popular game fish in Hawaii but Kirk has his own method for catching them.  It is hard fishing but the rewards are commensurate.  The scenery is spectacular and the experience of fighting a strong apex-predator fish over a jagged and pitted reef in the pounding surf is a truly unique thrill.

Kirk picked up the first fish and narrowly missed a second, much bigger one.  I caught the next two fish, with each successive fish a bit larger than the last.  The second fish was so strong I had a moment of panic as I felt the plastic reel-seat on my rod bend nearly to the breaking point. 

Eating sashimi on New Year's day is something of a tradition in Hawaii so we kept most of the fish to share with friends and family.
I don't keep fish very often so I had dust off the sushi knives and try to remember how to cut fish. You can see the results of my effort below...

A Fishing Story for Tomorrow

I was inspired this morning by a NerdFitness blog post to try something new. Last time I went fishing I had some success but access to the prime spots was limited by deeper water and waves. Today I decided to pack extra light and bring along an old boogie board to help keep my rod out of the water if I blundered into a deep hole or needed to swim across a channel. Things were going pretty well at first. The board was definitely helpful in getting out to the reef and I started casting at a likely looking spot. I had the board fastened by a 6 foot cord to my belt and it would tug slightly when a wave came through. Pretty soon the tugs got a lot harder and I noticed the board was foundering a bit in the passing waves. Then this happened:

The board broke in two. One half was still tethered to me but the other half was floating free in the waves. I couldn't in good conscious let the big chunk of Styrofoam drift away but I was not ready to admit defeat. So, I splashed after the piece, broke it into smaller chunks, shoved them in my shirt and kept on fishing!
When I graduated from the academy in October, a friend and former co-worker gave me a fishing themed lei and attached fishing lures to it.

I don't know if it was coincidence but these are one of my favorite papio lures and this was my first chance to try them out. I waded/swam my way along the reef with my broken board in tow. I stopped at any spot that looked promising and eventually found myself on an unusually shallow outcrop right in the surf zone. A perfect place for papio. Sure enough, on the third or fourth cast my little squid lure got hammered and I pulled in a nice fish.

Biathalon

For the first time in months I managed to fit in a morning of fishing. Chris, a classmate from the academy, joined me for the short drive to one of my neighborhood spots.

The plan was to look for bonefish but after 30 or 45 minutes of fishing in poor conditions I suggested that we instead take advantage of the low tide and wade out towards the edge of the reef to try fishing for papio. We made it to the break and fished hard for a while. The surf wasn't big but when the sets came through it felt more like we were swimming than fishing! Despite the challenges we had a great morning and I managed to hook up one nice little fish.

It felt healthy to take a break from work and remind myself of the reasons I live in Hawaii. I believe Chris felt the same and I think it's likely we'll be out on the water again soon.

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.

Hawaiian Freshwater

Summer has been hectic with travel - from Southeast Asia we traveled back to Hawaii for a short visit, then returned to Tennessee. After only a week, I was off to Oregon to act as best man in my friends wedding. Now that everyone has said "I do," I am hoping to find some fish. Before I get too far behind on the blog though, I want to share a few of my recent fishes. On my last day in Hawaii, I was fortunate to get a call from my friend and Hawaiian fishing Guru, Kirk. He had been under the weather and we had canned our plan to either go ulua (trevally) fishing or flats fishing for o'io (bonefish) because even in the tropics, wading all day is cold and exhausting. Instead, Kirk suggested that we head to Lake Wilson, Oahu's biggest fresh water body, for a mellow day of tucanare bass fishing among the eucalyptus trees at Kirk's secret spot.

Tucanare bass are not actually bass, but the world's largest species of cichlid, and as I soon learned, they are voracious feeders, strong fighters and aerial acrobats. Kirk had the first fish, caught on live bait. I snapped off a good sized one, but after spooling on some 15lb test I managed to land my first tucanare. The fish wouldn't stop flopping around, and I dunked my shoe in the lake trying to get my camera out, but I think the self portrait turned out pretty good:

The fishing just kept getting better. We soon switched to a light tackle rod with a small minnow lure, and a flyrod with a weighted baitfish imitation.

At first we tried to be quiet when playing fish so as not to scare off the shoal that seemed to be right in front of us, but as our arms got tired and our fingers became raw from lipping big fish, we began to land and release fish with no regard for stealth. All of the fish that day were good sized tucanare bass except for two. Kirk caught a largemouth and I hooked a red devil, another species of cichlid which can sometimes be enticed to take a fly.

It turned out to be an epic day of fishing - perhaps thirty fish between the two of us.Although I have no idea how many pounds it was, I am certain I set my personal record for most pounds of fish landed in one day.