Summer Family Fishing In Kona, Hawaii

I am back home from our family summer trip to beautiful Kona, Hawaii!  Everyone had a great time and we did a lot of fishing and caught a lot of fish.   There were so many memorable days and exciting catches that I do not know where to start.  The summer started off with great yellowfin tuna fishing with the average size being over 150 pounds!  The entire family got in on the yellowfin action with Laurel catching a nice one without any help.  Debbi followed suit with a 180 pounder that swallowed a live six pound skipjack we were using for bait.  My yellowfin tuna highlight came while fishing a porpoise school with the greenstick rig.  After boating a hundred plus pounder, I watched in awe as two big tunas crashed the artificial squids dangling from our greenstick line!  After a tough and exciting battle our angler was able to boat two, hundred plus pound yellowfin tuna at the same time on one rod.  I will never forget holding the first tuna on gaff and looking below into the clear, blue, Hawaiian water and seeing the other tuna swimming around waiting for its turn to go for a boat ride!  The tuna crown for the summer would belong to my thirteen year old son James.  On a stint where he would fish around the clock, all day and all night, James was commercial fishing with our friend Kaiwi Joe Thrasher one night when the duo would land a giant yellowfin tuna that was over the two-hundred pound mark!  James and Joe would also boat several other yellowfins, some large albacore tuna and even a pacific swordfish!
The rare (but not so rare in Kona) spearfish made its presence known throughout the entire summer.  These fish have eyes bigger than their stomach and will often try a big lure with big hooks set for big blue marlin.  Spearfish are notorious tail biters and are very difficult to hook.  That being said we were fortunate enough to get many shots at spears and were able to catch fifteen of the rarest billfish in the world!  My ten year old daughter Laurel's potential IGFA record 36.5 pound spearfish is one I will not soon forget!  I will also remember a spear hooked on the fourth day of the Hawaiian International Billfish Tournament.  We were leading the tournament and every fish was very IMPORTANT!  Captain Jason Holtz backed down hard as we chased the spear all over.  The shortbill spearfish jumped fifteen times as we fought it with minimal drag to avoid pulling the hook.  Unfortunately the spear jumped off before we could get a tag in, but what fun it was chasing that fish around on the surface!
The blue marlin is the king of all fishes in Kona, Hawaii!  These fish were hard to find in the early part of the summer, but as the season wore on they became more and more abundant.  Everyone in the family had action with the blue marlin.  Laurel had three marlin on that would have been world records for her, but unfortunately they all got off, including a fish over five hundred pounds that Laurel had on for several minutes.  She was able to catch and release blue marlin, but none big enough for the record.  James got in on the blue marlin action as well, catching them from the chair as well as pullling on these fish with the leader.  James handled the leader on a day when his uncle Trey released three blue marlin and a spearfish.
Debbi also caught Pacific blue marlin including a nice fish in the ladies tournament.  Later that same day we had a big fish come to the teasers, then fade back and eat a lure armed with a 9/0 hook.  Another female member of out tournament team was up at the time, but the tournament winning marlin got off the hook shortly after the strike.  I spent lots of time in the tower, and saw many blue marlin come to the lures, each and every one very exciting in its own way.  The fish I will remember the most, however, came one afternoon while fishing on the Marlin Magic with Jason Holtz and Brian Toney.  We had just jumped off a small blue marlin when the biggest fish I have ever seen came nearly all the way out of the water after the short rigger lure and missed!  Not to be denied, the GIANT blue marlin raced from behind the lure, pushing a wake from its massive size and grabbed the lure.  The marlin went to the air immediately, giving everyone on board a great view of the size of the fish.  When the fish hit the water again, it stripped hundreds of yards of line from the reel in seconds.  As Brian and I cleared the other lines, Jason chased the fish down.  Our angler (a big guy from New Zealand) did a great job on the fish.  Jason ordered us to "Get the Gaffs out!" and my heart started beating faster and faster as we will only pull out the gaffs if we think the fish is over the magical thousand pound mark!  Jason would later tell me that this fish impressed him more on the bite than the fish they caught only a couple weeks earlier in a tournament that would weigh in at 940 pounds!!  Unfortunately the blue marlin we were fighting this day would pull the hook less than a hundred feet from the boat after an intense forty-five minute battle:(  There are stories like this that happen nearly every day in the calm, deep waters off Kona.  During our stay fish over 600, 700, 800, 900, and even 1000 pounds were weighed and or released making for exciting fishing knowing that at any time you could be hooked into a true monster!  One fisherman who travels to Kona every year to fish big marlin summed it up best by saying "Kona is the only place in the world where someone catches a fish over five hundred pounds every day!!  Why would you want to fish anywhere else". 

Our family will be heading back to Kona next summer, so if you are interested in big yellowfin tuna, the rare shortbill spearfish or the magnificent (sometimes gigantic) blue marlin let us know and we can arrange a trip for you.  There are tons of other things to do on the big island of Hawaii, but fishing flat calm waters in the lee of the island is what does it for me!