Well, the big blue marlin showed up in good numbers. Four blues over 700lbs were caught by the fleet today. We had our shot at a small blue marlin about 125lbs but it quickly jumped off. Kevin and his daughter Bridgette were patient all day. We went to the deep and fished hard but the bite was closer to the ledge and we couldn’t get back in the zone before the bite shut down. Bridgette did manage to catch a small ahi which they took home for dinner. Hopefully the big blues will stick around!
Dave and Denise fished with me today and are celebrating their 30th wedding anniversary in Kona. We left the harbor early and headed south looking for blue marlin and tuna. It took some time but we found a nice porpoise school and were able to get a nice one to jump on the squids. Dave got in the chair and landed this nice 127lb ahi, his largest fish so far. 
They are hoping to come back to Kona next year for another visit and hopefully fish with me again! Congratulations on your nice fish and 30 years of marriage!
It’s been just over a week since I last fished. I took the boat into drydock for some yearly maintenance. We ended up pulling the shafts and checking them as well as installing new props. 
I also replaced the side windows from clear Lexan to dark tinted glass to give my clients a cooler ride downstairs. The fighting chair was also completely refinished. The boat got a good buff and wax job and a fresh coat of bottom paint. She looks great and runs even smoother with the new props….So in the water she went Friday afternoon 6/3/2011.
Saturday I hosted Lou and Jackie of Sparks, NV. Lou and Jackie are avid flyfishermen and wanted to give offshore fishing a try. We headed south of the harbor and caught a small mahimahi that Jackie reeled in. As we headed farther south we found a big porpoise school that was holding fish so we put out the greenstick and were lucky enough to have a nice ahi blow up on the 2nd squid closest to the boat. Lou saw the bite and quickly got in the chair and after a 15 minute fight landed his first ahi weighing 138lbs!
Walter and Lynne fished last Thursday with me and unfortunately we got skunked. They are the parents of Dan Preiss who fished with me a few weeks ago. On that trip, Dan fought nice blue marlin for about an hour before it came off that we estimated at 500lbs or more. Today was Walter and Lynne’s second day out and we had high hopes of getting into something…anything. We trolled our way south and found a nice porpoise school. We fished them for a while but no luck. So off we headed to one of the nearby buoys to live bait. The buoy was holding a lot of small tunas so we trolled smaller lures to try and catch a few. Again, no luck. Maybe the bait fish were more worried about predators than feeding. So, when all else fails, go to jigging. I got Walter set up on the jig and he caught 2 nice ahis on his first two drops. I put the small tunas in our tuna tubes to use for bait at a later time. As I was about to drop the jig back in the water a large shape cruised by the corner of the boat no more than 12 feet away. It was a big blue marlin looking for something to eat. I quickly rigged one of the tunas Walter had just caught and threw it out. The bait hit the water and we all watched as the marlin turned on a dime and inhaled the bait right next to the boat. The fish peeled out almost half a spool of line on it’s initial run and came up jumping about 300 yards away. Wally was up in the chair and fought the fish to leader in about 30 minutes.
As we brought it up near the boat we noticed it was missing it’s bill. It probably lost it in a fight with another fish when it was smaller. Walter’s fish weighed 447lbs!
Mike Damon and his son Jesse joined me today on the Lepika for a 3/4 day charter. We ran offshore looking for marlin and tuna but the bite seemed to have slowed. At about 8am we found a nice pod of porpoise and worked them for about two hours without any luck. There were some big ahi in the school but most of them were too deep and out of range of our lures. As we headed back I decided to try our luck right in front the harbor for some ono. We made three passes on Kaiwi Point without a bite. On our fourth pass I marked a fish on my sounder at 20 fathoms and pointed it out to Mike who was upstairs with me. As he looked at the screen I turned around to see a big ono dive onto the long corner lure from above. Mike ran downstairs and in a few minutes had a nice 40lb ono in the box!
