April 25, 2012 – Dan and Danny Fishing Kona

Danny and his wife Stacy of Woodinville, WA, along with his cousin Tanya and her husband Dan of Phoenix, AZ fished on the Lepika with me today.  We started right at the harbor mouth for ono early in the morning.  We made pass after pass on the ledge without a bite.  As the sun rose higher over Hualalai Volcano we decided to head offshore insearch of bigger game.  For the next four hours we would struggle to get a bite.  We only heard of one other boat that caught a blue marlin so we headed in that direction and worked the area.  Everywhere we went sheets of flying fish bolted in front of the boat…a good sign at least that there was a lot of feed for predators, but where were they?  At about 1:30pm I headed straight out off of Red Hill when the starboard outrigger flexed back signaling a bite but it quickly straightened out as whatever it was let go of the lure.  By the size of the boil it was either a small mahimahi or a timid spearfish.  We continued to work the area when the long rigger rod started to scream followed instantaneously by the stinger.  It was a double strike!  In the distance two nice striped marlin started a series of jumps.  Dan was first up and got in the fighting chair with the stinger rod as Danny stood next to the long rigger rod and started fighting his fish with the rod in the holder.  Danny’s fish came to leader first and we quickly released his 70lb stripey in about 10 minutes.  Soon after, Dan got his stripey to leader and after a few quick pictures we safely released his stripey which weighed about 80lbs!  Persistence definitely payed off today!  At the end of the day we found out that Dan and Stacy’s offer on a condo in Waikoloa was accepted so it sounds like we will hopefully be seeing more of them in the future!