Tom, his son Dave and daughters Kristen and Sarah, fished with me today. Tom has fished with me for the last 4 years and has caught a lot of ahi from 120-170lbs but his goal has always been to catch a fish bigger than himself. Tom usually vacations in the Spring and charters me for about three days to better his chances of seeing quality fish. Little did we know today would be the day his wish would come true!
We started early as usual and started trolling not far from the harbor. The sun had just 
peeked over Hualalai volcano as we neared an area outside of Red Hill when a big dorsal surfaced behind the stinger lure running on my Fin Nor 80w. It was a nice fish and we watched as it turned on the lure and got the hooks firmly set in its mouth. Line was screaming off the reel as the fish took of for the horizon. Tom knew the drill and got buckled intot he fighting chair. We chased the fish hard and the lighter gear made it more difficult than the usual 130lb tackle we use. 
Tom got to work and after 45 minutes got the leader to me. We took some nice pictures alongside the boat and released her in good shape. I estimated his fish at a solid 400lbs! We worked the area more and it wasn’t more than an hour later that another 400lb blue erupted on the short rigger lure! This time Dave was up and got into the chair. The fish gave us some nice jumps way out there before racing back towards the boat. Dave did a nice job fighting the fish but unfortunately the fish came unbuttoned just a few yards before we got to the leader. We continued along the coast and ran into a nice porpoise school. We trolled them for a while without any luck so I tried them on the greenstick. We saw some ahi on the sounder but they wouldn’t bite right away. Pass after pass we marked them on the screen when about two hours later a big ahi 
blew up on one of the squids! Dave was up and got to work fighting his first big ahi. He made quick work of it and got me the leader in about 15 minutes! His ahi would weigh 105lbs! We quickly reset and worked the school and it didn’t take long before another nice fish pounced on the squids! This time Sarah was up and was a little hesitant getting into the chair. She was surprised at the power of these fish and struggled at first but quickly got in the groove and got me to the leader. Her ahi would weigh 141lbs! 
What a day…a 400lb blue marlin and 2 nice ahis! Tom has another day booked later this week so hopefully we can get him an even bigger blue marlin and who knows…maybe some more ahi!