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.

You Give Love a Bad Name

Our good friends in Hawaii just got married. Tara was the maid of honor and I agreed to play photographer. Needless to say we were pretty busy but I managed to fit in a few days of fishing between wedding related activities.

I met up with my friend Kirk early one morning and we waded out to fish for white ulua along the edge of the reef. We had some success, a couple of whites, one bluefin ulua and a big cornet fish:

A few days later we went out for o'io (bonefish.) We often fly fish for o'io but Kirk reported that the fish in this particular area are very difficult to hook with a fly rod. Instead we headed out early, at low tide, to catch some crabs:

With our bait in tow we made our way to the edge of the reef. The hope was that the bonefish were waiting in the deeper water for the tide to rise so that they could safely enter the flat in search of a meal, like the delicious crabs we had just caught. We cast our bait along the drop off and waited patiently. Within ten minutes Kirk had a nice fish on his line:

We spent most of the day on the water. Kirk landed one more fish and I hooked one but lost it. We saw many fish though, some quite large. Kirk says that he has seen o'io in the area that are probably bigger than the world record. I can't wait to get back out there!