February 21, 2012 Alan Makes the Big Fish List

Richard and Dorothy fish a few times a year with me.  Richard is one of the luckiest anglers I have ever fished with.  Today, he brought along his friend Alan and his wife Barbara for a half day fishing on the Lepika.  The marlin bite was spotty so I decided to fish north of the harbor where the bait was more likely to stack up.  We worked our way up to the Grounds and as we got near the top corner a big shortnose spearfish ate the stinger lure.  Barbara was up and she fought her first ever spearfish to the boat in under 15 minutes.  I estimated it at 40lbs!  We continued on and worked the area.  A freind of mine was nearby and called me to tell me he had a big porpoise school that might be holding ahi.  We headed that way and as we neared the school another shortnose spearfish attacked the stinger but came off.  We worked the porpoise school but didn’t have much luck.  Another group of porpoise joined in from the north and my friends had a good pass on this new school.  They took a double strike from 2 big ahi that would end up weighing 187 and 95lbs!  I made a pass on the porpoise near them and marked a fish at 45 fathoms.  The short rigger bait got bit and line started to peel off the reel.  Alan was up and got in the chair.  I thought it was a big ahi at first but the fish quickly gave up and made its way to the boat.  It ended up being  areally big aku (skipjack tuna) that weighed 27lbs!  It is so far the largest aku caught by the kona fleet this year.  There is a good chance it will remain the biggest aku caught until the end of the year.  We left the porpoise school and worked our way back to the harbor.  On our way we would miss 4 striped marlin and a spearfish!  UGH!  The fish are here and it should only get better as the moon gets bigger!