September 2, 2008 KONA HAWAII FISHINGUPDATE!
The Blue Marlin fishing in Kona is excellent right now. Steve Long and his wife from Houston, Texas had reserved HighNoon for a full day charter and hit the jackpot! We were live baiting off the Keauhou ledge with two 8 lb skipjack tuna. After about two hours, I was thinking maybe we should change over to trolling....but that thought didn't last very long. First, our downrigger bait went off and I put Steve in the fighting chair as this huge marlin put white water everywhere as it screamed line off the reel. We quickly started clearing the second live bait when another Blue Marlin slammed it and now we had two Blue Marlin on at one time. I decided to get the smaller one to the boat first since we were going to take that fish for some friends of mine who wanted it for poki (native Hawaiian food dish) for a large party this coming weekend. I exchanged rods with Steve so he could fight that fish and get it to the boat. It came up in about 20 minutes..and we pulled that one into the boat. I then transferred the bigger fish to Steve and he did a great job of getting that fish to the boat for a release. However, this fish had swallowed the hook and unfortunately, we were unable to release it unharmed. So..we headed back to the dock and weighed in two Blue Marlin...one weighing in at 258 lbs and the other....a giant 741 1/2 lbs! That is 999.5 lbs of fish at the same time.
We have gotten lucky a few times lately. David Kreuiziger from Phoenix, Arizona was the lucky angler earlier this week. He booked a half day charter...and for 3+ hours it looked like it wouldn't be Dave's lucky day. With 30 minutes left in the charter, I made it to the 1000 fathom point just off the harbor and pointed the boat straight toward the harbor. Suddenly a large fish began stalking the stinger lure....and as we watched, it slammed it once and hooked up. After a great 45 minute fight, Dave got the fish to the back of the boat where I was able to release this 400 lb Blue Marlin unharmed. The past month we have had Blue Marlin hookups almost every day. If you are a Blue Marlin fisherman, Kona is the place to be for the next few months. Overall things look great for both September and October as these large skipjack tuna schools should bring in the big game fish.
