Innholdsfortegnelse for March 2004 i Hawaii Fishing News

■ I am a charter captain on Maui, and I’ve been fishing in Hawaii for the last 20 years. Even though I can’t imagine doing anything else for a living, my life as a fisherman means 16-hour days and low income. I am married with three children and have always had to rely on additional income from commercial fishing and lure making in order to make ends meet. I found myself getting tired of depending on my charters’ knowledge of tip etiquette. or praying for a cargo net or log just to make a decent wage. I started looking forward to the fishing tournaments more and more just to have the “chance” to win some extra money. Tournaments are like lotteries with much better odds. I read and heard about…

■ The “Community-based Marine Co-management” bill introduced by Representative Hermina Morita was revised by Linda Paul, Hawaii Audubon Society, and Bill Devick, Division of Aquatic Resources. The revised version went to Rep. Ezra Kanoho and became a committee report that then went to the House floor for discussion and was voted through. As we went to press, we were informed the bill was stopped by Rep. Eric Hamakawa. Cheers! This bill is the product of hard-core environmentalist groups whose purpose is io reduce fishing activities on main island reefs. THE FOLLOWING STATE LEGISLATORS VOTED IN FAVOR OF HB2056. Hermina M. Morita, Room 314 14th Representative District-Haena, Hanalei, Princeville, Kilauea, Anahola, Kealia, Kapaa, Waipouli, Wailua House Lots Phone (808) 586-8435; Fax 586-8437 From Kauai, toll free 274-3141 + 68435 E-mail repmorita@Capitol.hawaii.gov…

■ When the first fisherman surprised himself by catching a fish on an artificial bait, the first myth of fishing lures was created: they embody some magical and mysterious power granted by the gods. These days the gods are likely to bear corporate names and muster the power to mass-produce fishing lures by the millions, each identical to the other in all physical attributes while lacking only the magical touch of the fishermen, themselves. It’s no wonder, then, that fishing lure myths are as worshipped today as the lures, themselves. Let’s probe a trio of lure-fishing myths to see if they explode. In each case, look for the pieces of a practical idea to improve your fishing. 1. Lures must be expensive. Capt. Steve Roney works with Capt. Steve Kaiser…

No Fishing in the NWHI ■ A Northwest Hawaiian Islands (NWHI) Coral Reef Ecosystem Reserve’s Advisory Council consultant wants fishing banned inthe proposed NWHI National Marine Sanctuary. Though the fishing ban would only be temporary, allowing stocks to grow, fisherman Gary Gill, who served as an alternate on the council, is not biting and calls the report “extremist.” The $230,000 contract to build an alternative Environmental Impact Statement was done by Dr. Bruce Wilcox, of Sustainable Resources Group International. Dr. Wilcox is a professor and chairperson of the Division of Ecology and Health at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. The contract included research, collecting data and running a total of 20 meetings throughout the islands. Dr. Wilcox’s report said that precious coral, lobster and bottom fishing impact the coral…

■ It looks like fishing on this side of the island will be really good this year. There have been a lot of fish caught-already, and in previous years this has not always been the case. Mahimahi have already shown up in good numbers; we received a report that a Hale‘iwa boat caught 1,000 lbs from around a piece of rubbish. Large ahi have also been caught on the North Shore from the X FAD These are excellent clues as to the possible fishing year we could have. It’s not an El Nino year, so let’s hope we get good fishing. Hank Howlett returned to the fishing game this year with his son Michael and a boat called the MARGO. Mike is using the boat mostly and is doing quite…

Rain or Shine, Annual Boat Blessing Goes On ■ On January 2, 2004, the boats docked at Hale‘iwa Harbor and those trailered to the harbor got an annual good-luck blessing from a Bonsan (priest). The blessing was combined with a sake party to celebrate the new year. Every captain, boat owner and crewman drank sake to toasf to a goodduck new year and say thank you for the previous year. The day was a very rainy one, but the blessing still went on. After the blessing, good luck charms were given out. Trolling and Bottom Fishing Hale‘iwa troilers saw good action. The fishing started off slowly at the beginning of the year but picked up after a week. Small marlin were the talk of the town, and then came the…

Howzit Chuck, Last winter 1 came home for the holidays, and this year I brought my fishing buddy Chris with me. Here in Seattle he has taught me how to fly fish for trout in mountain lakes, but 1 have always told him that the fish we were catching were the same size as the bait that we used back in the islands. Still it is always fun to be fishing, and a smoked trout is nothing to sneeze at. Within four hours of landing, we were out walking the reefs for tako on a moonless night. We put a bunch of night tako in the bag, but they all crawled out a small dime-sized hole in the bottom. We went trolling, and 1 caught a small shibi, but still…

■ Spring is approaching according to the calendar, but in Hawaii waters winter-type weather can still appear in March. But there will be more good weather days than bad weather days. There is always the possibility of the occurrence of any of the following severe weather events: cold front with strong Kona winds, upper trough with heavy rain, gusty trade winds and high northwest wave and surf. Trade winds should be present on more than half the days in March with the possibility of about eight to 14 days of gusty trades. Northwest swell activity should be noticeably less. There may be about five days of high surf greater than 10 feet along the north shores. There’s still a chance of surf greater than 25 feet high at Sunset Beach,…

Hey Chuck! Check out this picture! I was diving T FAD on January 9, 2004, with grad student Yannis. We were changing out our sonic receivers on the windward side FADs that record the presence of shibi that we have been surgically implanting with coded transmitters. When we went down to swap receivers, everything was normal. A school of small shibi below us kept my eyes and interest while I unbolted the old unit and attached one with a new battery and blank memory banks. When we started up the chain, I couldn’t believe my eyes! I kept pinching myself to see if I was bent or dreaming. Anaraigi (striped marlin) had rammed its bill through the first link under the FAD and gotten tangled in old lines. When we…

To Palau Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands ■ When I became head of the fisheries programs for all of the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands (TTPI), it was very apparent there were only a few boats of any size throughout the region. The island of Peleliu in Palau had a transport vessel to move people back and forth to Koror, but it was on its last legs. We also had a fisheries boat that was a gift from Japan-the KATSUWONUS. It was about 45 feet in length and diesel-powered. It was not built for commercial fishing, but it did give us some mobility within Palau. Nakamura-san, the father of Kuniwo Nakamura, the president-to-be of Palau during the 1990s, had stayed on in Palau after the war and was…

■ There is an old saying that goes, Fishing lures catch more fishermen than fish.” Where did this saying come from? Is it true? What does it mean? When I first started fishing and would go to a tackle shop, I remember being like a kid in a candy store looking at all the neat-looking lures: the bright shiny ones; the ones that really looked like fish; the ones that seemed to say, “Everything eats me.” How could I choose the right one? Were some lures scientifically proven, guaranteed to catch fish? If so, I needed to buy them because I needed all the help I could get to catch fish! Action Versus Color Over the years I discovered that the fancy lures won’t always catch fish. Most of the…

It’s a fun day of mahimahi fishing off Kawaihae on the Kohala Coast on the Big Island. ‘Upolu Point is upside-down, but a currentline has barnacled debris and holds fish. Fresh opelu run on lightweight 50s quickly put 12 pieces in the box. Running inside on the 40-fathom ledge, the engine coughs, sputters and dies. The dreaded offshore winds that breed in the Kohala Mountains are notorious for blowing hard enough to make sand feel like ammo fired from a pellet gun. The cell phone is out of range. The CB radio has no ears. It’s sunset and time to enter the twilight zone of bad Hawaiian fishing trips. It’s the horror of being sucked offshore into the night. The above ‘Upolu Point story is fiction, but other stories are…

For letters, with photos. received during the month of March we’ll send you HFN’sErTibrbidered, with “Holoholo Styla” Fishing Cap…our way of saying thanks for sharing youyr catch! …Hana pa‘a Chuck Send to: P.O. Box 25488, Honolulu, Hawai‘i 96825 Wassup Chuck, Guess what? I was “Mr. Pole Benda” this past three-day weekend. My brother-in-law and I went holoholo on the west side of Moloka‘i. The first two days we went, we never get nothing. But on the last day, Sunday, August 17, my brother-in-iaw had a strike. But that’s not all. 1 had one strike too. After he brought in his kagami, my pole was screaming so I ran to my pole and pulled it out of the pole holder. I fought my first ulua for about 30 minutes until we…

■ Coral reef animals have strange life histories. When you consider where they live and what they eat, most coral reef animals live (at least!) two entirely separate and different lives (or “stages”) in each lifetime. Many seem to live three. Few landbased animals travel such long distances and have such unrelated life stages and complex life histories. An open-ocean journey is how most Hawaiian coral reef animals start their lives. One of the longest is taken by Hawaiian spiny lobsters. After lobster eggs hatch under a female lobster’s tail, larval spiny lobsters are blown southwest, far out to sea where they spend a year as larvae, floating on surface waters and blown around by ocean winds. Larval spiny lobsters are clear, wafer-thin, shaped like a leaf with legs, and…

5. Should Marine Preservation Areas (MPAs) replace the current Public Fishing Areas (PFAs)? 106 Yes 667 No The following comments were sent in support of MPAs: • Need more area. • Close areas for a limited time (1 to 2 years) and then analyze the results. Reopen or open to limited entry (lottery permits). Areas should have kupuna caretakers to observe. • I think that MPAs are okay in some places. Too much is not good. Some are okay. • Some of them, not all. Another alternative would be to restrict fishing in some areas for only certain times of the year. • Maybe every other year or every two years with limited catch. • But perhaps already restricted areas (i.e. military/federal restricted areas; bases, airports, etc.) PFAs if on…

■ If you are an offshore fisherman, you may have seen a suspicious-looking white and yellow boat fishing or deploying scuba divers on any of the 13 FADs surrounding o‘ahu. What’s really crazy is you may have seen people on the boat throwing perfectly good shibi over the side! The vessel in question is usually equipped with a large wooden cradle mounted on the stern rail or may have a huge fiberglass fish tank occupying the entire back deck. This vessel represents a basic component supporting a suite of research projects now being conducted by Dr. Kim Holland, Dr. Dean Grubbs and Dr. Carl Meyer of the Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology, Dr. Brian Popp of the School of Oceanography/UH and a large cast of associated graduate students and researchers.…

■ The island of Vava’u in Tonga is well-known to sailboaters, eco-tourists and backpackers who flock there for whale watching in the months of June through October. But it is also a prime location to catch blue marlin and other sportfish species. Tonga has a reputation for sport fishing. A German fisherman by the name of Conrad Engelberger caught a world-record Pacific sailfish on 50-lb class line that weighed 210 lbs. This fish was caught off the island of Eua on July 7, 1990. In more recent times, skipper Steve Campbell of the REEL ADDICTION in Vavat’u caught around 105 billfish fin 69 days of fishing during the 2003 season. Two end’of-the-year tournaments in 2003 also attest to the successful fishing in Tonga—especially in Vava’u. First was the three-day Tongan…

Rods Fit for a King ■ The history of our Hawaiian Islands always fascinates me, and our local daily papers often provide a good dose of nostalgia, factual history and archival material for me to enjoy. I like to learn everything about our past, whether it be about the first flight of an airplane in Hawai i or how marsupials ended up in Kalihi Valley. Reading a recent article on the history of timepieces in Honolulu, I was quite surprised to stumble across some information that seemed significant to the history of our beloved sport of recreational fishing. What possibly could connect the two? Well, it turns out that they’re both related to the sandalwood trade. In their 1992 article of The Hawaiian Journal of History (VoL 26); “Hawaiian Time,…

OFFSHORE TOURNAMENTS BLUE MARLIN SPRING SHOOTOUT April 10, 2004 Jeff Kahl—(808) 283-2628 E-Mail <jkahl@tiki.net> KBC PURE JACKPOT April 17, 2004 Keehi Boat Club—O‘ahu (808) 841-7271 4 Sand Island Access Road, Box 44, Honolulu, HI 96819 OUTBACK STEAK HOUSE FISHING TOURNAMENT June 13, 2004 HIBA-Sue Vermillion (808) 329-6155 74-381 KealakehePkwy. #1 Kailua-Kona, HI 96740 7TH AHI FEVER IN WAIANAE FISHING TOURNAMENT June 19,2004 WBFC-Norman Swift (808) 696-3399 P.O. Box 821 Wai‘anae, Hll 96792 <www.wbfc.net> BTH ANNUAL KONA CLASSIC TOURNAMENT June 26 & 27, 2004 Trap idi Ila-Kona (808) 327-1440 P.O. Box 2158, Kailua-Kona, HI 96745 <info@konatournaments.com> FIRECRACKER OPEN July 3 & 4,2004 Trapidilla-Kona (808) 327-1440 P.O. Box 2158, Kailua-Kona, HI 96745 <info@konatournaments.com> SKINS MARLIN DERBY July 9,10 & 11,2004 Trapidilla-Kona (808) 327-1440 P.O. Box 2158, Kailua-Kona, HI 96745 <info@konatournaments.com> KBC PURE…