It was good to have two days off and now it was back to fishing. I was able to catch up on some maintenance, paperwork and most of all – rest. Today I hosted Rick San Nicolas of Modesto, Ca. I met Rick at my daughter’s hula practice at Hulihe’e Palace last year. He was in Kona to attend the yearly Merrie Monarch Hula Festival in Hilo. Rick is a master at feather lei making and sells his products on his website www. hawaiianfeathers.com . This year, Rick was back to attend Merrie Monarch and wanted to do some fishing with his daughter Amanda and her boyfriend Derek. We left early and searched north of the harbor for signs of fish. At about 10am we found a nice pod of porpoise about 20 miles from the harbor. All the signs pointed to fish present in the school. There were at least 30 shearwater gulls and two frigate birds escorting the school and the porpoise were chasing flying fish in all directions. On our first pass I marked 2 ahi on my sounder but they didn’t bite. We made several more passes and on our 5th pass the short rigger came down with a solid bite. 
Rick was in the chair and after a 15 minute fight he landed his first ahi weighing 98 1/2 lbs. This was Rick’s first real big fish and he did a great job fighting this ahi. 
