Innholdsfortegnelse for September 1993 i Hawaii Fishing News

September, a transitional month between summer and winter, is usually the month with the least bad weather. It would be the month of lowest bad weather activity if tropical cyclones did not appear in Hawaii waters. The potential of a tropical cyclone invading our waters is about the only major threat during the month. Trade winds will still prevail, but the gusty trades will be at their minimum tor the year; only about four days in the month. Northwesterly swell and surf heights are slowly picking up, but the very high surf is still a month or more away. Southerly surf action is decreasing, but there’s still a chance of higher than normal swell from that direction.…

Team Hayashi ■ The husband-and-wife team of Dean and Lei Hayashi landed two ulua with a total weight of 121 lbs. It all started on the night of August 6, 1993. Dean, Lei and Tom Tamasaka headed to their fishing grounds, called “Plenty Kiawe,” located in Kaupo, Maui. Everything was in their favor-clear weather and light winds. The poles, with baits down, were quiet, and anticipation of a strike grew as the moon began to rise. At 12:45 a.m., Dean’s pole lunged forward, with bell clanging. Line ripped out of the reel in steady bursts… Dean ran to his pole and set the hook as the fish kept pulling line, heading for the deep. Then the fish began to travel from side to side. Knowing that the area was free…

■ My journey to Newport, Rhode Island, for the 1993 National Spearfishing Championships began on August 1 at the Honolulu International Airport. As fate would have it, my flight was overbooked, forcing me to take a later flight and making my 18-hour journey that much longer. I arrived in Providence, Rhode Island, and was met by teammates Tim Nakamura, Hanalei Adric and Terrance Takahata. The weather was pleasant with temperatures in the mid-80s-nothing like what I expected of the Eastern Seaboard. Our final destination was Kings Beach, located just outside of Newport in Narraganset Bay. The meet area was a little over 2 miles long with numerous coves, beaches and small rocky islands. Our rented station wagon was loaded to the brim with dive gear, paddle boards and us four…

Dramatic Rescues Come in Threes Gary Black and Mike Miller were attempting to stop the flooding in the engine room of the MADONNA, a 65-foot tuna boat, before it sank in the. Pacific 870 miles southwest of the Hawaiian islands on May 5. Gary alerted the Coast Guard in Honolulu by radio and set off the ship’s EPIRB. After arriving in the area, the long-range rescue planes from Barber’s Point in Hawaii could only drop pumps and life rafts to the pair and watch over them until a rescue boat came on scene, but the clear signal transmitted by the 406-megahertz emergency beacon helped the C-130 aircraft get to the mishap quickly. “After the plane first appeared on the horizon, it flew directly to us. And I know they couldn’t…

■ Anglers on 98 boats from the Indian Ocean to the Pacific competed in the Annual World Cup Blue Marlin Championship, a tournament fished around the globe on July 4 each year. When the spray settled, it was the legendary Capt. Alan Card’s boat CHALLENGER with a special Hawai‘i connection that brought in the winning catch to Bermuda, a 1,1954b blue marlin. The catch was worth $84,550! Tex Schramm of Dallas, Texas, thought it might have been the greatest one-day billfish tournament in history. “When you consider the quality of fish-three marlin over 800 lbs and a grander-[caught] in a single-day tournament, this had to be the greatest,” Tex said. “Can you imagine catching a blue marlin over 800 lbs-and losing?” The Hawai‘i connection in the World Cup was the…

Blue Marlin Workshop Excerpts ■ The Western Pacific Regional Fishery Management Council (WPRFMC) hosted a blue marlin workshop last April to examine the status of Pacific billfish stocks. The National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) participated, as did the Pacific Ocean Research Foundation (PORF) and many others. Participants reviewed available fishery statistics and assessments and heard case studies from other regions. Charterboat operators, recreational fishermen and longliners also expressed their views. The purpose of the meeting was to “identify problems and to recommend courses of action to the WPRFMC,” according to the NMFS. Following the workshop, the NMFS published a brief report on some of the facts presented. The report attempted scientific objectivity and avoided emotional language. For its worth, we are reprinting excerpts. “The [NMFS] Honolulu Laboratory overview provided information…

True Adventures of HFN Readers Dear Chuck, I’m not sure how you get your stories for your “Tail Tales” section of the News, but perhaps this will meet your requirements: My horizontal crew (David and Shane) and I were understandably optimistic: Shane’s mom had cooked up her usual terrific lunch, the weather looked good, and heck, we’re always optimistic! Besides, any day on the water is great. So we left the Ala Wai at around 6:45 a.m. and turned left, intending to go out past Diamond Head as far as we could go. But by the time we were about a mile past the head buoy, the wind had picked up a bit. I abandoned my original plan and turned right, heading downhill. When we were about four miles off…

The World’s Toughest Tournament ■ The Hawaii Four Flags World Championship is the toughest tournament in the world to win, and that’s why, when you win this one, you are a world champion. Winning the four-day tournament requires capturing a qualifying fish in each of four categories: ‘ahi (yellowfin tuna); mahimahi (dolphin fish); a’u (marlin); and ono (wahoo). Sounds easy, but it isn’t. Anglers might capture three of the four flag fish, but the last one can be oh-so-hard to boat. More Than One Way to Win Even though you might not score with all four flag fish to become a world champion, you can still be a winner. There is a separate division for each of the four flag fish, with one winner in each division. The team scoring…

■ Taking a page from the fishing “play book” of anglers in Hawaii who originated the legendary Konahead lure, a pair of Florida fishermen have devised a modified trolling lure that is selling like hot cakes in the Florida Keys. The lure, called El Notcho, is like an ice-cream cone to a mahimahi. In Florida, mahimahi (also called dolphin fish) are a prime target of offshore fishermen. Sometimes when tourists hear Florida fishermen say “dolphin,” it brings to mind the bottle-nosed dolphin made famous by the old TV show “Flipper.” Florida fishermen call the bottle-nosed dolphin, porpoise. When they use the name “dolphin,” they are talking about mahimahi. El Notcho is made in a painfully slow process involving hand work by its inventor in Fort Lauderdale and finish work by…

Windward Surfcasting Club Report ■ The Windward Surfcasting Club held its Fifth Annual Invitational Fishing Tournament from noon, July 16 through July 18. The weigh-in time was from 10 a.m. to noon on July 18. Fishing was limited to the island of o‘ahu, the entry fee was $15 and this year we had 31 participants. The tournament was co-sponsored by Pacific Brake and Alignment which served as the location for the weigh-in. Unlike last year when fish were registered in all four categories, the fish must have taken vacations to the neighbor islands. The weather was nice, but only two categories saw qualifying entries. The most active category was the ‘o‘io division. The mam objective, however, was that everyone enjoyed themselves and did so safely. The Fifth Annual Invitational Tournament…

Decompression Sickness Unraveled ■ DCS is a very serious issue that is often not stressed enough in your basic scuba course. DCS is brought on by the expanding nitrogen gas your body accumulates on one or more dives. As you know (or should know) the air we breathe is 79 percent nitrogen, 20.95 percent oxygen, and less than 1 percent trace gases (xenon, argon, helium, etc.). Unlike oxygen, the nitrogen we breathe is not metabolized by the body. Instead, it is absorbed by the tissues and then later “off-gassed” by the oxygen leaving the body. You see, oxygen can act like a sponge or a magnet, taking unnecessary by products out of the body as it goes. The main problem is that, in some tissues, nitrogen takes almost as long…

■ Few people outside a growing circle of scientists and search-and-rescue controllers initially grasp the dry concept of satellites and ground stations, of mission control centers and funny-looking orange tubes called Fewer still care much for the technical aspects of the subject except that it may have a big hand in saving their life or the life of someone they know. A look inside this complex network is a glimpse into a worldwide web of satellites and rescue centers, which have assisted in rescuing more than 3,100 people since the system was established in September 1982. Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacons (EPIRBs) and the multinational satellite system that receives and relays their distress signals are part of a network developed to produce a simple result: rescue mariners and flyers in…

■ After the month that produced the greatest number of billfish releases of any this year, it is reasonable to reconsider the question of mortality in released game fish-not just billfish, but other local game fish species like ulua, as well. Once again, the anglers, captains and crews fishing the two billfish tournaments managed by the Hawaiian International Billfish Association have contributed significantly to the total number of billfish released in Hawaii’s waters this year. Thanks to tournament rules that reward the release of smaller billfish, the majority of tournament-hooked fish are tagged and released, hopefully to fight again. Every one of these fish that is either recaptured or retagged and released will contribute a significant amount of information to the growing body of knowledge about Hawaii’s renowned billfish population.…

Keehi Boat Club ■ What do you do on your seventh wedding anniversary? Go fishing, of course! On July 15, Mike Aksionczyk, captain of the LISA ANN, did just that. HH-buoy was his destination. Mike’s friend, Mike Souza, of the MENTO BOYZ, also out of Keehi Boat Club (KBC), was his crewman that day. Just outside of HH-buoy, a reel started singing, and they wound up with a 314-lb Pacific blue marlin on board. That day they also brought home a 24-lb mahimahi and a 33-lb spearfish. Seems like the LISA ANN and Mike are a great combination! Duane Kerr, captain and owner of the BOOMERANG, had quite an experience on his nine-day trip to Nahoa, near Nilhau. Several days into the trip, he hooked up to something huge. After…

■ Wednesday, September 15, 1993. Mark it down on your calendar. At 6:30 p.m., at the Waikiki Ballroom of the Hale Koa Hotel, the Hawai‘i Fishermen’s Foundation (HFF) will be holding a public meeting. There will be plenty of parking available. The purpose of this meeting will be to show the Western Pacific Regional Fishery Management Council (WESPAC) the cross section of opposition to the council’s proposed preferred alternative to Amendment 7. Amendment 7 will replace the current moratorium on longline fishing when it expires in April of 1994. The council will decide at its meeting on the following day on its final preferred alternative. The council’s current preferred alternative is to allow the 166 currently permitted longliners to continue to fish, even though only 100 or so actively do…

■ Unless you haven’t been fishing at all, you probably know that we’ve seen a better ‘ahi run this year than we’ve seen in a while. The schools haven’t been as large as they have been in years past, but there have been some big fish landed, and areas from Hilo to Barking Sands have seen fish come and go. For a while, it was simply a matter of being in the right place at the right time because all the ‘ahi were coming up on blind strikes. But for a few anglers, it started to look like Christmas. One of our friends picked up 35 pieces of ‘ahi, each weighing more than 100 lbs, in just three nights of fishing. A few trailers saw days of six to eight…

■ After three dramatic fishing boat sinkings in the Western Pacific within two weeks, Coast Guard Lt. Mike Mohn was moved to comment that he’d never witnessed such a significant loss of vessels within such a short time. In all three cases in April and May of this year, the ships’ emergency position indicating radio beacons, or EPIRBs, first summoned a call to the Coast Guard rescue center in Honolulu, and a satellite pinpointed their positions for searchers. “The EPIRBs saved their lives,” Lt. Mohn said. Thirty-nine people and one dog were rescued in the three separate incidents in which EPIRBs helped locate the crews. The Joint Rescue Coordination Center, where Lt. Mohn has worked for three years, dispatches Navy, Air Force, Marine and Coast Guard ships, airplanes and helicopters…

TBF Pushes Conservation Forward ■ Since its inception in 1986, The Bilifish Foundation (TBF) has worked undaunted on its three-pronged mission of conservation through research,: education and advocacy. After five years of focused research into every aspect of the billfish fishery. TBF now has much of the hard scientific data needed to present its case to the world’s fisheries managers, Scientists working under the direction of TBF have conducted biological studies that encompass billfish physiology, genetic analysis, and stock-and migration assessments. Researchers have used observer programs, port sampling, and socioeconomic studies to develop what may prove to be the most powerful tool in TBF’s Advocacy Program—the true economic value of the bilifish sportfishery. Representatives of the foundation seize any opportunity to influence management decisions. Because of TBF’s wealth of information,…

Dudley Worthy, a renowned big-game fishing captain of the Kewalo Basin fishing fleet, was fishing on May 27, 1993, aboard the KAHUNA KAI with Eugene Platinos. The group of anglers they had on board that day managed to hook and land a 728-lb Pacific blue marlin, which is to date the biggest marlin of the year for the Kewalo Basin fleet. This fish was caught on an unusual lure, a blue-and-yellow Kaku Lure called a “Bigfoot.” What follows is Dudley’s story. Dudley was shopping at his favorite store, Kida’s Fishing Supply, which is known for its vast selection for fishing enthusiasts from shoreline anglers to. offshore trollers. On this particular day, Dudley saw a plastic tub of trolling heads on the counter, and couldn’t help but notice the sign, “X-mas…

For Holoholo letters, with photos, received during the month of September, we’ll send you a pair of “Vicious Fishes” milk caps (new design) from Stan Pao-Canada. Plusan HFN Koolzie drink muff… our way of saying thanks tor sharing your catch!… Hana pa‘a, Chuck Send to: P.O. Box 25413, Honolulu, Hawaii 96825 Dear Chuck, On May 22, 1993, we had the occasion to take seven members from Northern Army’s Logistics Division and a member from their Public Affairs Office, Japan Ground Self-Defense Force, on a fishing trip to Penguin Banks. We’re happy to report that they thoroughly enjoyed themselves, landing a mixed bag of ono (kamasu-sawara), mahimahi (shiira), ‘ahi po‘o (mebachi) and aku (katsuo) as indicated by the enclosed photos. It also provided them with a break from eating good old…