Lepika Sportfishing, Kailua Kona, HI 96740 • 808-960-0068

It was good to have two days off and now it was back to fishing.  I was able to catch up on some maintenance, paperwork and most of all – rest.  Today I hosted Rick San Nicolas of Modesto, Ca.  I met Rick at my daughter’s hula practice at Hulihe’e Palace last year.  He was in Kona to attend the yearly Merrie Monarch Hula Festival in Hilo. Rick is a master at feather lei making and sells his products on his website www. hawaiianfeathers.com .  This year, Rick was back to attend Merrie Monarch and wanted to do some fishing with his daughter Amanda and her boyfriend Derek.  We left early and searched north of the harbor for signs of fish. At about 10am we found a nice pod of porpoise about 20 miles from the harbor.  All the signs pointed to fish present in the school.  There were at least 30 shearwater gulls and two frigate birds escorting the school and the porpoise were chasing flying fish in all directions.  On our first pass I marked 2 ahi on my sounder but they didn’t bite.  We made several more passes and on our 5th pass the short rigger came down with a solid bite.  Rick was in the chair and after a 15 minute fight he landed his first ahi weighing 98 1/2 lbs.  This was Rick’s first real big fish and he did a great job fighting this ahi. 

Dave of Calgary, Canada is here on his yearly trip to Hawaii.  He’s staying at his parent’s condo in Kihei, Maui and decided to take a quick flight over to Kona for the day to fish with me.  He’s an avid fly fisherman and was referred to me by a past client who is the founder of TFO Flyrods.  Our goal was to catch some tunas or mahimahi on the fly.  We left the harbor late because Dave flew in that morning.  I made a few calls to other fishermen to find out if the buoys were clear of rough tooth dolphins which love to steal fish off your hook.  Unfortunately, the dolphins were at the buoys so we headed far offshore to find floating debri that might hold some fish.  About three hours later we spotted a frigate bird traveling fast as if it had seen something far off on the horizon.  We followed the frigate bird for about 45 minutes and it led us to a small pod of porpoise, about 30 of them.  We made our first pass and the sounder lit up with signs of big ahi.  As we finished our first pass the stinger came down and Dave jumped in the chair.  He landed his first ahi ever in about 20 minutes.  It weighed 114lbs!  We tried for several more hours to get another ahi but theyi went deep and stayed there for the remainder of the day.

Local resident Brad invited his SoCal friend Steve to fish with me today.  We met early at the dock and headed south in search of the south porpoise school.  There were storm clouds on the horizon this morning and after yesterday’s lightning storm I was concerned about going far from the harbor.  As time went on, the clouds moved away from us and we made it to the porpoise school some 20 miles south of the harbor at around 9am.  There were over 20 boats already in the school and a friend called and told me over 20 ahi had already come out of the school.  I went right to dropping some baits in the school and on our first drop we hooked up.  Steve jumped in the chair and managed to land his first ahi which weighed 103lbs.  We tried several more times but there wasn’t much more fish in the pile.  We headed back towards the harbor and maneuvered around several BIG thunderstorms along the way.  The lightning show was pretty scary but we managed to make it back safe!

Mark and Mike met me again early this morning.  We had fished hard the last 2 days so they decided to do a 3/4 day on their third day.  We headed south this time trying for a big blue marlin.  We headed to C buoy which in the past few weeks was holding a lot of bait but had also attracted a pod of rough tooth dolphins.  The rough tooth dolphins have become acustom to eating anything you hook, especially the small tunas we use to live bait.  Today however there wasn’t a single dolphin on the buoy and I thought this was the day for a big blue marlin since no one had been able to live bait the buoy for several weeks.  We caught some baits and sent them back.  After a few laps around the perimeter of the buoy without any luck I decided to go a little closer to the buoy.  A small oceanic white-tip shark came over and ate our short bait just a few feet behind the boat.  It bit thru our leader and disappeared intot he blue.  Mike saw the bite and wanted to catch it so we caught 2 more baits and before we knew it were hooked into a nice white-tip shark.  Mike brought it to leader in a few minutes and we released it boatside.  We caught another bait and before I could send it back another white tip charged in and ate the bait.  This time Mark was in the chair.  As Mark fought the white tip we had several others swimming around the boat.  We teased the sharks by pulling dead skipjack in and out of the water.  We had 8 foot sharks hitting the back of the boat trying to eat the baits.  Mike had a lot of fun watching them chase the baits to the transom.  Mark finally brought his shark in and we released i, a nice 8 footer.  Unfortunately, we didn’t get the big blue marlin we were looking for but it was great fun playing with the sharks!  Mark and Mike will hopefully be back this summer for some marlin action!

Today, Mark and Mike met me at the boat again early to try and get a head start on the fleet.  We ran far south, fighting a strong north current to get us closer to the pod of porpoise we had found the previous day.  On the horizon we spotted a boat that had found the school so we ran in his direction.  As we neared we saw him hook up to his first ahi of the day.  We decided to drop bait in the school and missed one on our third drop.  More boats showed up and we started to mark fish shallower on the fish finder.  We depolyed the greenstick to see if we could get an ahi to bite.  It was hard to manuever around all the boats but we finally got an ahi to bite.  Mark and Mike both missed the bite yesterday but were amazed to see the ahi boil on the squid hanging just barely in the water.  Mike was up and with coaching from his father landed his first big ahi.  Back at the dock we weighed the ahi.  Mike wanted to catch one bigger than his father….his ahi weighed 108lbs!  1/2 a pound bigger than his dad’s!