November 17, 2011 – Kai’s First Blue!

My children Fisher, Kai and Marina were off today for Parent Teacher Conferences.  My oldest son, Fisher, had his conference today at 3pm so all the kids decided to take a fishing trip with me.  The day before I commercial fished on the Grounds for opakapaka (pink snapper) and ended up catching a 300lb blue marlin in addition to some small opakapaka.  So, I decided to head up there and live bait.  We left the harbor late around 9am.  I ran to the grounds and we quickly caught two small skipjack tunas for bait.  We walked the baits up the ledge and then back down to the Top Corner.  At around 12pm, our long bait got nervous and a blue marlin swallowed the frantic bait.  My youngest son Kai (11 yrs old) has never caught a blue marlin so he was up in the chair first.  He buckled into the chair as the marlin took out 50 yards of line.  It surfaced a 100 yards back tail walking along the surface.  Kai spent the next 15 minutes fighting the blue to the boat.  The blue marlin was hooked pretty deep in the stomach so we elected to take it for the table.  His first blue marlin ended up weighing 171lbs!  Happy with our catch we headed back for the harbor to make Fisher’s teacher conference.  Fisher (13 yrs old) caught his first blue marlin when he was 10 years old and it weighed 135lbs.  Being as competitive as he is we plan on fishing tomorrow to try for a bigger fish than Kai’s!  Of course 7 year old Marina wants a shot but we’ll have to see about that!