Rarotonga
■ At the northwest edge of Rarotonga, just after “Black Rock,” Richard Murakami, Chris Watanabe, Ron Lum, and I stopped our Suzuki minivan to survey the fringing reef 300 yards offshore. Here, we thought, the breaking waves might be small enough to give us a chance to fish.
Rarotonga, the capital of the Cook Islands, is a five-hour and 30-minute flight from Honolulu on Hawaiian Air. Rarotonga lies directly south of Hawai’i across the equator.
All around that small (about 16 miles in circumference) but high island the reef sits close to the land. In many places the lagoon between the reef break and the land is shallow enough to wade. In situations like that, the reef predators (trevally, barracuda, sharks, snapper, and some grouper) patrol a narrow corridor…