July 16-17, 2012 Mike and Jeremiah Ahis and Ono!

Today Jeremiah and his father Mike joined me for a consecutive 3 day charter.  Jeremiah is an avid fisherman and wanted to show his dad a good time in our calm Kona waters.  On the first day, we struggled to get a bite.  We stayed in close and worked the ledge and finally got bit by a nice size ono.  Mike was up in the chair and caught his first fish of the trip!  The marlin bite has been spotty but the porpoise school has been holding some nice ahis consistently so that’s where we headed on day 2…out to the deep.  I set lines on the 1000 fathom line and within the first half hour a nice ahi ate the long rigger bait!  Line was peeling off the reel as Jeremiah buckled himself into the harness.  The last few days we’ve been getting blind ahi strikes so I wasn’t too surprised by this bite.  This was Jeremiah’s first time in the chair and he did a great job by landing his first and biggest ahi in about 20 minutes!   It would scale out at 158lbs!  After packing the fish away I got us set up and continued trolling.  I had just got up to the flying bridge and looked straight ahead and there they were!  Porpoise, about two miles straight ahead!  We made a trolling pass in front of the school and didn’t mark any fish.  I decided to put the greenstick up in case some of the fish were high up swimming with the porpoise.  We worked the school for about an hour when another school came in from the south.  This school looked really good!  There were shearwaters and frigate birds following them which meant there was a good chance ahi were with this school.  I pulled the greenstick across the front of the pile and a nice ahi blasted one of the squids but missed!  I continued on then another ahi blew up on one of the squids and yanked on the breakaway line.  As the ahi struggled to break the breakaway line two more ahi piled on two other squids dangling in the water!  It was a triple!  Unfortunately, all three ahi would come off!  UGH!  Jeremiah was lucky enough to get the triple on video so hopefully I can put that on this blog soon.  We set up again and worked the school.  It didn’t take long before another ahi inhaled one of the squids!  Mike was up and landed his first ahi in about 15 minutes!  Mike was really surprised by the power of these fish.  Pound for pound they are by far the strongest fighting fish in the ocean.  We again ran back to the school and set up.  It took a while but we were able to get another ahi to jump on another one of our baits!  Jeremiah got strapped in and landed his second ahi of the day in about 10 minutes!  We would end day 2 with three ahi from 100lbs-158lbs!