Kona Hawaii fishing report – Jan. wrap-up.
The good trolling bite is still happening in Kona. I could just about copy and paste last months fishing report in here because not much has changed. Mostly spearfish coming in followed by mahi mahi, striped and blue marlin, shibi and otaru but there’s yet another fish to add to the list this month. Ono (wahoo) are normally a summertime fish but we do get small runs from time to time in the winter. Mostly ono like to hang near shore but sometimes they wander the deep. Right now we’re having a deep water ono run.
The bottom bite slowed just a little and most (but not all) of the sharks have moved on. Baitfish along the ledge of the grounds are few between and not readily biting either. Live bait always out shines dead baits when bottom fishing. Two days ago Capt. Rennie Boyd was fishing near me and he called my cell to talk about what was going on. I had just landed an amberjack and it got shark bit on the way up. The Capt. Rennie decided he would switch to shark fishing. He called me later and said that three tiger sharks, each over 1000 lbs. were feeding near his boat. He had one hooked for a while but didn’t get it to the boat. He did catch and release a dusky shark about 400 lbs. though. Yesterday I fished that same area and hooked up one of those 1000 pound tigers. About an hour into the fight the three main gear screws sheared off and jammed the spool tight. I towed the fish around for a couple of minutes and then gunned the boat to break the line. It’s a fairly new reel but a fish like that really puts a strain on the tackle. Our disappointment was short lived. About 15 minutes later, trolling on the way home, we caught a 545 lb. blue marlin plus we already had a rainbow runner for the dinner table caught earlier in the day.
As of the end of 2004, I became the top sportfish catching captain in Kona for the 8th year in a row. Capt. Guy Terwilliger was my closest competitor and my hat’s off to him because he did it mostly by trolling and only some bottom fishing. It was a common site last year to see Capt. Guy flying one or more fish flags nearly every trip. When I talked to him a few weeks ago about his catch percentages, they weren’t very far below mine. A year ago this month I decided to put my money where my mouth was and offer $100 off your full day charter if we didn’t catch at least one fish. My 2004 stats for January were really suffering because I had already missed catching on three days. After making the offer, I only missed two more days the rest of the year. An extra $100 in the pocket sure is a good motivator!
See `ya on the water,
Capt. Jeff Rogers ,
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