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

Craig has fished with me the past 3 years and on his last two visits we caught 3-4 big ahi from 120lbs-160lbs!  Those trips were “guy” trips and he brought along local friends of mine Britt and Scott who played baseball at Pepperdine with him.  Today was a father son trip and his son Nate came along for some action.  Of course, Britt and Scott tagged along too!  We left the harbor early and ran south looking for anything we could find.  Fishing has been pretty tough lately so we headed out to the deep and looked for signs of life.  About mid morning we found a small porpoise school and worked them with the greenstick but didn’t mark any fish.  There has been some nice ahi coming out of the school so we decided to leave and look for another pile.  We worked our way down and ended up at one of the FADS (Fish Aggregation Buoys) which wa sloaded with birds and bait.  As we got close 40-80lb ahis started blasting bait all around us.  I set up the greenstick and worked the area.  It wasn’t long before 12-15lb ahi started piling on the jumping squids!  We had two small ahi on and were about to real them up when a bigger ahi piled on another squid.  Craig got in the chair and started to get to work.  There were two nice ahis on the line and we wanted some fish for dinner.  Craig has caught bigger ahi before with me but these would do for today!  Our biggest ahi of the day would weigh about 70lbs!  I really wanted to get Nate into the action so we set up the greenstick again and drug it next to the buoy.  Instantly, every squid started to get attacked by 10-12lb ahi!  We ended up getting a triple and Nate got to work fighting them all on one rod!  In about 10 minutes he had all three in the boat!  With only a few hours left in the day we caught a few more for the grill and headed home with a nice load of ahi!

I haven’t had many charters this month which is as expected this time of year!  Everyone is back to work and not many people are traveling to Kona for vacation right now.  Things usually start to pick up near Thanksgiving and then run right thru the holidays.  That being said, there’s still some fish out there to be caught and some nice ones too!  The porpoise schools are loaded with big ahi and there’s still some small blue marlin around to keep things interesting!

Jay, from Kauai and his son Mason fished with me and did really well.  We found a nice porpoise school all by ourselves far offshore and got lucky.  We worked the pile for several hours and had a nice ahi blow-up on one of our squids!  Mason was the angler for the day and horsed in a nice 114lb ahi in about 15 minutes! 

A few days later, we found another nice porpoise school which was loaded with big ahi in the 120-170lb range!  We worked the school with the greenstick and missed one right away!  UGH!  A big ahi came up and just plain missed the bait!  After working the school for a while we were lucky enough to again have a big ahi blast one of the squids!  Nick was up and battled his first ahi to the boat in just under 20 minutes!  It was his biggest fish ever and wanted to try and lift it by himself after we weighed it! Nick’s ahi would end up weighing 141lbs!

September ended up being a great month this year!  The fish showed up a little late this Summer as they have for the last three years.  We had a few epic days of fishing especially with Daryl from southern California.  Daryl fishes every year with me and usually for several days at a time.  He is a greenstick fanatic and loves watching these big tuna blast off on the squid baits!  This trip he fished four days straight and landed 6 ahi from 102lbs to 116lbs!  A few days later the Roladers fished a full day and caught two really nice ahi weighing 106lbs and 125lbs!  Don also fished again this year with me and we lucked out and found a big log floating in the water that was covered with nice mahimahi! We ended up catching 5 from 17lbs to 28lbs before searching for porpoise that were holding big tuna.

I had a chance to fish for giant bluefin tuna this year off the east coast of Canada.  I spent a week with a few friends of mine and we caught fish ranging from 450-600lbs daily.  We were lucky enough to weigh one that went 754lbs!

Mark of “In the Bite Magazine” and his good friend John joined me for a day on the Lepika.  Their goal was to catch a nice blue marlin for John who has caught a lot of sailfish but has never caught a blue marlin.  We started off close to the harbor since the bite has been in shallow along the ledge.  We worked our way south when a small blue piled on the stinger lure!  Line peeled off the 80 Fin Nor as Mark got John strapped into the fighting chair.  I backed up hard on the fish and John got the leader to me in about 15 minutes.  We safely released his first blue marlin that weighed about 130lbs!  It was still early and we continued on.  The bite went dead so I headed offshore to try some deeper water.  On the horizon I spotted a nice pile of porpoise.  Mark and John have caught ahi but nothing over a 100lbs and neither of them had seen the greenstick in action.  We ran to the pile and saw ahi jumping in front of the school chasing flying fish.  I set the greenstick up and made my first pass.  Mark and John watched as the squids bounced in and out of the water when a nice ahi blasted completely out of the water and inhaled one of the squids.  John was up and got in the chair.  The ahi dove deep and John landed his first ahi in about 15 minutes!  It weighed 110lbs!  The bite was on so we quickly reset and made another pass.  Almost instantly another big ahi blasted one of the squids, leaping all the way out of the water!  It was Mark’s turn and he quickly got in the chair.  He did a great job and landed his first and biggest ahi which weighed 146lbs!  Mark has seen some pretty incredible bites but he will definitely never forget seeing ahis flying out of the water to eat the baits off the greenstick!  It is something he will never forget!