I usually go out on the water about once a week with my longtime friend, Masa Ushioda. It's his boat, so if he's not out, then I'm landlocked. No blogs on those days!
We live on the west coast of Big Island, where there are heaps of fishing and photo taking opportunities. Masa is an award-winning professional photographer and the tech expert at my company, SeaPics.com. His photos of marine life have been published in tons of books, magazines, calendars - you name it. Today was just a day for fishing, though.
This day's fishing was notable for the pod of pilot whales we saw and for the school of mahi mahi that circled our boat! If you're interested in deep sea fishing, nature photography or Hawaii, please read on and check back to this blog from time to time!
9/27/07
We got a late start on this overcast day, and headed out to the VV Fad (Fish Aggregation Device) near Keauhou. We checked out what the other boats were fishing there, but it turned out to only be small aku, which didn't interest us. From there we headed out to C buoy, trolling with 4 rods as we went.
Just outside of Kealakekua Bay (where the famous Captain Cook met his maker) we spotted a nice pod of pilot whales heading in the opposite direction. This was not unusual, as we often see dolphins, beaked whales, pilot whales and more in this area. On this day, however, we knew the BBC was filming on the Big Island about oceanic whitetip sharks, which often accompany pilot whales, so we called our contact, marine photographer Doug Perrine, to identify the whales' location. No word yet if we actually aided the BBC effort.
We continued south and had no luck trolling. Then the ocean, which had been a bit rough, suddenly went flat, like glass. There were no boats in the area, which is usually a bad sign for fishing. Fortunately, we got a good sign that more than cancelled it out. Right in front of us, a huge pod of pantropical spotted dolphins began leaping and spinning. They were head slapping, tail slapping, mothers and calves alike, putting on a real display. They were excited, it turns out, about the huge school of bait fish right below! Just then, a 60 lb bigeye tuna popped out of the water, right next to us! If we were going to catch anything today, this was the spot!
Masa, who usually has a good sense of how to position the boat for fishing, tried a maneuver. He went to position the boat in front of the dolphins so they'd drive the fish our way, but when he did, everything got quiet. All the dolphins just disappeared, and we were staring at the silent, glassy water, wondering what happened. Then we saw them, about 7 or 8 mahi mahi, circling the boat!
Mahi mahi, as you probably know, are great eating and popular in restaurants worldwide. They're also known as dorado or dolphinfish. The latter name has fallen out of favor in restaurants, as people (in the West anyway) are not eager to eat anything called "dolphin." Mahi mahi (the Hawaiian name) are fish, and have no connection to dolphins, other than their name and their extraordinary leaping abillity. For stock photos of mahi mahi, check out this link: Mahi Mahi Pix
Masa started throwing bait into the water and got out every rod he had in the boat - about 10 or 12, and put on an assortment of lures. The mahi mahi kept circling, but no bites. After a while, Masa threw out a hook with some bait and caught a hagi (junkfish). He kept it on the line for a while to keep the mahi mahi interested. He then got out his new chum box full of last week's fish guts (Masa keeps the previous catch's frozen for just this purpose) and tossed it in. Unfortunately, the knot untied and Masa's new chum box slipped into the blue. See ya, $17.95!
After about 2 hours of watching the mahi mahi swim races around the boat, we finally hooked one! It leapt out of the water about 10 times, and got as high as 8 ft out of the water. Several times it jumped up and landed on its side with a big splash! When we got it in, it was over 3 ft long and about 15-20 lbs, a beautiful yellowish-green with blue speckles. Masa was so happy, as we'd been out all day. About an hour later, we caught another.After we reeled in the second one, all the mahi mahi disappeared, like they'd suddenly got the idea we didn't have their best interests at heart. Masa phoned his wife to tell her we were heading home. Then just as we got underway, all the mahi mahi came back for another quick lap around the boat. Oh well, we'll see them next time!
On our way home, we passed VV buoy again, the one we started at this morning. There were two guys out there fishing from their jet skis, with their coolers of beer on the back. It was like Easy Rider out there, a mile into the ocean.
Kona Sue
http://www.SeaPics.com
SeaPics.com Blog
Links to stock photos of species mentioned in today's blog
(Please be patient!-10 seconds to load):
mahi mahi
pantropical spotted dolphins
pilot whales
oceanic whitetip sharks
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