Lepika Sportfishing, Kailua Kona, HI 96740 • 808-960-0068

For the last three years, I’ve donated a full day charter to the Washington State Tuna Classic Albacore Tournament.  Each year they donate thousands of pounds of albacore to the Northwest Harvest food bank and provide fishing opportunities for soldiers wounded in combat.  Last years raffle winner was Josh!  He and his son Grady placed in the top 20 last year and would have done better if they didn’t plug their boat with albacore early in the day!  After a hard days worth of fishing, Josh and his family went to the tournament party like all the others hoping to win some prizes at the raffle.  They really wanted to win my charter an unfortunately for them, my charter was the last raffle to be presented and it was nearing 11pm.  Josh’s wife has always wanted to go to Hawaii and Josh was hoping this would be their “excuse” to make the trip.  Before the winning number was announced Josh leaned over to his son and said, “if we win this, we’re going to Kona!”.  His number was up and he was on his way to Kona!  Originally, we had planned to fish a few days earlier but the weather was unseasonably rough so we rescheduled to another day.  Josh and Grady met me earlier the next day and we headed offshore at first light.  He’d never caught a big ahi so that’s what we targeted today.  We ran far in hopes of finding porpoise.  Eventually we found them and even though the school was small we gave them a try.  We put our baits out and on our second pass a nice ahi exploded on one of our baits!  Josh got harnessed into the fighting chair and fought his first ahi weighing 130lbs in about 15 minutes!  The wind started to blow out of the north pretty hard and white caps were starting to form.  This is really odd for Kona and we are used to fishing in almost dead flat calm water 99% of the time.  It took us a while to find the pod of porpoise.  Once we did, we reset our baits and continued to work the school.  I wasn’t marking many fish in the school, maybe 2 at the most so I was weighing our options for the rest of the day.  Unexpectedly, another nice ahi took one of our baits!  This one was a little bigger and smoked the Fin Nor 130!  Josh again got geared up and fought our second ahi to the boat in about 20 minutes!  It would hit the scales at 148lbs!  By now, I was afraid we would have lost the school for good but we again scoured the ocean to find them and we did!  I marked one more fish in the school on every third or fourth pass.  It wasn’t looking good.  As we were about to give up, another big pod of porpoise joined the pod we were with and with them were a few more fish!  I had a nice mark on my sounder and as we both looked back at our baits a monster explosion erupted just a few yards behind the boat!  Josh buckled into the chair and got to work.  The fish made some weird runs and at times we thought it had come off.  In about 20 minutes Josh would land our biggest ahi of the day!  As I slid the fish into the boat I guessed 190lbs but when I tried to get it into the fish box I re-estimated at 200lbs!  We don’t see too many ahi over 200lbs in Kona so anything over that is a real trophy!  At the scales, Josh’s ahi would end up at 225lbs!  Luck struck twice!  Winning the raffle and landing a 200+lb ahi!  We would end the day catching our fourth ahi weighing just over 80lbs!  For sure Josh is a lucky guy to not only win the raffle but to catch an ahi of a lifetime!  Hopefully, his luck will continue and maybe we’ll see him next year!

Al and his wife Gray have fished with me for three years!  They didn’t make it to Kona last year but instead went to Costa Rica in search of roosterfish and sails.  On this short vacation they decided to again try their luck!  I was feeling a little “under the weather” in the morning and almost cancelled but I knew Al was really looking forward to fishing so I sucked it up and went.  They know I like to leave early to get a jump on most guys so we left at first light.  We ran pretty far before we started trolling in hopes of running into a blue marlin or maybe even a mahimahi which have been around in pretty good numbers lately.  A few hours into it we found another nice porpoise school.  They weren’t very active but I decided to go right to the greenstick.  Al loves this type of fishing because the bites can be incredible at times.  As I made my first pass I marked an ahi in the school and told them to watch the pattern.  A nice ahi boiled up on one of our baits and missed it!  As Al and Gray looked on, a big ahi zeroed in and blew up on one of our squids!  Al jumped in the chair and angled our first ahi to the boat in about 15 minutes!  Our first ahi would scale out at 108lbs!  I reset our lines and went back to the porpoise.  It was a big pile that was stretched for about 1/2 a mile.  I didn’t see anymore fish there.  I went back to another portion of the pile and marked two more ahi lurking deep.  I told Al and Gray to watch for a bite and sure enough, another ahi came up and ate!  Again, Al was up!  I thought the fish was smaller than the first because of the small boil it left on the bait.  I changed my mind (as did Al) as line peeled off the Fin Nor 130!  Al would land our second ahi in about 20 minutes and it hit the scales at 148lbs!  I didn’t see any other fish in the school so we decided to head inshore for maybe a marlin, mahimahi or ono.  I took us to an area a friend of mine had caught some onos at the previous day.  We had just set up the ono lures when the short bait fired off!  Unfortunately the fish came off on the run. Ugh!  We continued on and about 20 minutes later a nice size ono ate the short rigger!  Al has never caught an ono and now was his chance.  His ono would weigh about 30lbs!  As we worked our way down the coast, we caught another ono.  This one not big enough to even release the line from the outrigger!  10lbs…maybe!  On we went trolling close to the ledge.  Al and Gray said a mahimahi would be nice…Boom!  We take a triple mahimahi bite and manage to land one of them!  Wow!  What else could happen?  As we continued on we thought, “maybe we could catch a blue and get a clean sweep” .  A clean sweep is catching all four flag fish in one day.  We already had two nice ahi, two ono, and a mahimahi so we were 3/4 of the way there!  I switched over my pattern to more marlin type lures…big lures!  As I neared the harbor I decided to call it a day and went down to clear lines.  I’ve caught big blue marlin less than a mile from the harbor so “it isn’t over until the last line is in”.  As I cleared two lures from the pattern the short rigger came slamming down and line was screaming off the reel!  Out of the corner of my eye I saw a splash but not a good look at the fish.  Al came flying down from the bridge and got in the chair.  Just then line stopped peeling off the reel and started angling out to the side…tell tale sign of a big mahimahi.  Sure enough, what we hoped was a small blue marlin ended up as a nice 30lb mahimahi!  We had plenty of fish for dinner and called it a day!  As we weighed our fish the 30lb mahimahi was still kicking on the dock!  Al and Gray will be back in June for some summertime action!

Today Dion, his wife Barbara and their awesome daughters Maci and Shae, joined for a full day on the Lepika!  We left the harbor just before first light and ran to a nearby buoy in hopes of catching the girls something quick.  We had some live baits so I sent them back on some lighter rods that the little ones could handle.  It didn’t take long before a nice mahimahi came charging in and ate the bait.  Shae quickly volunteered to fight the first fish and jumped in the fighting chair!  With Dion assisting, she landed her first ever mahimahi which weighed about 12lbs!  Hoping there were more I sent back another bait and again got bit pretty quick.  Maci wasn’t having anything to do with it so mom got in the chair and fought our second mahimahi to the boat!  We had dinner in the boat!  We caught a few more live baits and headed out to look for something bigger.  A few hours later we ran into a big porpoise school which a few boats were already fishing.  I went right to the greenstick and on our second pass a big ahi flew out of the water and ate one of our squids!  Dion was up and fought his first ahi to the boat in about 15 minutes!  It weighed 159lbs!  I set up again and marked a few more fish in the pile.  I worked them for about 2 hours but the fish just refused the plastic squids.  I decided to switch to our live baits and dropped one back.   Almost instantly, a nice ahi took the bait!  Dion again was up and got harnessed in the fighting chair.  He managed to get me the leader in about 15 minutes and this ahi would end up weighing 101lbs!  With more and more boats arriving in the school I decided to head back to the harbor.  It was a lot of fun especially letting the kids get in on the action!

Jeff and Alan are both captains in Ketchikan, AK.  Jeff runs a charter business there while Allan is a captain and chief of police!  On day one fished a nice porpoise school that had a few fish in them.  We got bit pretty quick and Allan landed his first ahi weighing 97lbs!  We continued to work the porpoise just off the Kona Airport.  We were marking fish and after a few more hours we missed a nice fish that completely missed our bait.  As the porpoise neared the ledge we couldn’t get away from the Otaru (large skipjack tuna) that joined the pod.  We would catch 3 otaru to 20lbs which the guys took home for dinner!  I got a text from Jeff a few days later saying it was the best sashimi he had ever had, better than ahi!  On day 2 the guys decided to bring the wives along!  Again, we stuck with our plan to find the school we had fished the day before, but today was different.  We had an unusually strong south wind that rolled in making the sea conditions rougher than normal.  We did find a small porpoise school but it wasn’t holding fish.  It was getting pretty uncomfortable so I headed in closer to shore to try for some ono.  We made several passes up and down the ledge without a bite.  At the end of the day as I was clearing the lines to go in the long corner snapped!  Nadra was up and fought her first ono (and dinner) to the boat!  It wasn’t a huge one but they all eat the same!

Dennis has fished with me for the last three years.  He usually fishes for multiple days but this trip was a short one so he only fished two days with me.  On day one we fished a nice porpoise school which was holding some fish.  We had two bites in the school but unfortunately we missed them!  That’s how it goes sometimes but we had our chances with some 100lb+ ahi that day.  On day two, we decided to head back to the same porpoise school.  We were lucky enough to find a porpoise pod with some ahi swimming with them.  It took some time to get a bite, in fact it was almost at the end of the day when a nice ahi piled on one of our lures.  Dennis jumped into the chair and fought his 114lb ahi to the boat!  It isn’t his largest one but it was one for the day!  The last few years while fishing with me he weighed his biggest at 160lbs!