August 10, 2011 Kona Fish Report – The Fukushima Family Are Back!

Craig brought his father again along with Judy and his son Kevin to fish again on the Lepika.  They fished with me three years ago and caught a nice spearfish which they took home for some great sashimi and grilling.  Today I decided to head north to the Grounds where the marlin bite has been going off for the last few days.  As we trolled to the ledge there was bait from the airport all the way to the top corner of the grounds.  We made several passes with the lures but no takers so I decided to catch a live aku (skip jack tuna) and live bait.  The bait was tough to catch and we finally caught one which I quickly bridled and sent back.  I walked it up the ledge towards the corner and got a bite.  Line pulled slowly from the reel as we throttled forward.  Judy was up and fought what we intially thought was a shark to the leader in about 10 minutes.  To our surprise it was a really nice mahimahi that weighed an estimated 45lbs!  That’s a really big one for Kona waters!  We ran back to the ledge and quickly caught another bait and rigged it up.  It took several hours but we finally got another bite.  Line peeled off the reel as a blue marlin came up jumping a few hundred yards behind the boat.  13yr old Kevin jumped in the chair and tried to fight the fish.  This fish was hooked in the corner of the mouth which made it fight harder than most.  Kevin tried, but chose to give up the chair to his father Craig.  It took us about 30 minutes but Craig worked hard and landed his estimated 200lb blue marlin.  They are off to Kauai at the end of the week and hopefully will be back for two weeks in Kona on their next trip.