Kona Hawaii fishing report – May ‘05
The big fish just keep getting bigger! Kona now has it’s first “grander” of the year thanks to the captain, crew and angler of the Five-Star. The blue marlin weighted in at 1,132.5 lbs. There were a few “beasts” caught this month also. A “beast” is a marlin over 500 lbs. and one of those was caught on stand-up tackle!! Not to toot my own horn too loud but yes, it was with me. Kona captains rarely use stand-up tackle for anything but catching baitfish. I’ve been a stand-up fan for a long time now for both bottom fishing and trolling. While I’ve caught several mahi mahi, ono, spearfish and sharks up to 1000+ lbs. on stand-up Penn 30’s (modified) loaded with 100 lb. braided line, the biggest marlins I ever got on these rigs were in the 200 lb. range. Not much of a fight. To top off the difficulty of a 500+ lb. beast, this marlin was also foul hooked in the left shoulder. This gives any fish a better mechanical advantage. Even so, angler Bud Foster got the fish (after it took 600 yards of line out on it’s first run) up to the boat in about 40 minutes. The mechanical advantage the angler had with proper stand-up technique, modern equipment and just pure strength was enough to overpower any advantage that foul hooked marlin had. She was in good shape when we got her to the boat so we decided to just photo and release.
Mahi mahi should be in full swing right now but there is a severe lack of those sweet tasting critters. It’s a good thing the spearfish are biting good right now. The ono bite is picking up real good also so it should be a good season for them. Blind strike ahi are still being caught but not in the numbers that we saw last month.
The bottom bite has been real slow for everything but sharks. Even if it’s not a shark that takes your bait at first, it won’t take long for `em to find what you hooked up and gobble it down. Although I hooked some “beast” sharks this month, we broke leader, line, cable or pulled hook on all of `em. I made 2 new rigs with heavy tri swivels to try to beef up the strength of my bottom fishing rigs but the welds broke! Back to tying knots. Anyone here know a knot that’s stronger than a dropper loop that you can tie using 300 lb. test mono leader????
See `ya on the water,
Capt. Jeff Rogers ,
<A href="http://fishinkona.com">Kona Hawaii fishing</A>
