Lepika Sportfishing, Kailua Kona, HI 96740 • 808-960-0068

The blue marlin bite continues to be spotty at best as we headed into June.  The ahi bite on the other hand is one of the best in years!  The majority of our full day trips landed multiple quality fish!  Josh fished a 3/4 day and we lucked out early by finding a big porpoise school all by ourselves.  Our first pass yielded a triple strike and we managed 2 of them right away!  We continues to work the pile and caught several more trolling.  As the troll bite slowed we went to live bait and hooked a few more!  His biggest ahi that day went 192lbs! The rest were all well over 100lbs!  A good friend of mine from Waimea brought along his father inlaw for a full day on the Lepika.  We would end the day with 4 ahi from 91lbs-144lbs!  The bite was definitely on during this week!  Stacey and Mike also fished with me for the first time here in Kona.  They really wanted to get into fish so they booked two back to back full days with me!  On the first day, we were again lucky enough to find the right porpoise school!  On day one we landed with 3 ahi from 88lbs-120lbs!  On day 2, we knew where the fish were and headed back to the same area.  Again, we found a good pile of porpoise holding fish and quickly managed another 2 ahi from 97lbs-116lbs!

We are still waiting for the big blue marlin to show up but the porpoise schools are loaded with bruiser ahi!  This month we did really good and managed a 7 ahi day!  We missed three others!  On this trip California residents Jeff, Darrell and Carla fished Kona for the very first time.  We found a big porpoise school that was absolutely loaded with big ahi.  On our first pass we took a double trolling lures.  One came off but Darrel did a great job and landed his in about 15 minutes.  Ahi were jumping everywhere but refused our trolled lures so I went to the greenstick in hopes of getting more to pile on.  We got bit immediately on the greenstick and Carla was up landing hers in about 10 minutes.  The next few hours hours were a blur as we ran back ahead of the school and switched to live bait.  The baits weren’t in the water for more than 5 minutes before a big ahi blew up on them!  It was almost as fast as we could go and before we knew it 7 were lying in the brine of our fish box.  Full up we called it quits at 1pm and trolled back to the harbor!  Return client and good friend Mike from Seattle also caught a nice ahi while fishing with me.  Mike and his wife are planning on moving here one day so I’m sure we’ll be seeing even more of them!  Russ and Myra also had a great trip landing 4 big ahi between the two of them!  Soon after return client Ken of Pacific Seafoods returned to catch 3 nice ahi and a 35lb spearfish.  Another return client Mike and Barbara brought their daughter for three days on the Lepika.  We lucked out on all three days and caught them some really nice ahi as well.  First time clients Gary and Carole also had a great trip landing three big ahi as well!

The big ahi made a good showing this month!  Usually, April is a time for really big blue marlin but even during the full moon the big girls never really showed.  The lack of big blues was replaced by good amounts of big ahi and a lot of shortnosed spearfish.  One of my really good clients Mark and April fished a few days during their stay and did really good on big ahi and April’s first short nosed spearfish!  Mark is a writer for In the Bite Magazine and has fished the last three years with me and always seems to have good luck.  Another client, Trent, fished last year and caught several really nice ahis.  He came back looking for more big ahi but we settled for a monster shortnosed spearfish!  Tuna fever also brought back Seattle resident John and his wife Serena for more action.  We were lucky enough to catch two big ahis and a bonus 34lb ono!

Dusty and Denise are celebrating their 6th wedding anniversary here in Kona.  Dusty is a charter boat captain from Charleston, South Carolina and really wanted to catch some big ahi.  Dusty is also good friends of Keith who was crewing for me today.  We left the harbor before the sun came up and found a big pod of porpoise just as the sun came up.  I didn’t see any marks of fish in the pod so we headed father into the ledge.  There we found another pile of porpoise, but again no signs of tuna in them.  I decided to head back offshore into the deep and retrace our path from earlier in the morning hoping another pod was father back.  As we crossed the 1000 fathom line a big hole opened up behind the short corner bait just 15 yards behind the boat!  The line snapped off the rigger and peeled off the reel as the big blue headed for the horizon.  It didn’t jump until it was about 300 yards away so none of us knew how big she was, but we knew she was over 500lbs.  Line was disappearing at an alarming rate so we turned and chased the fish going forward.  Denise was already buckled into the fighting chair and cranking as hard as she could to keep tension on the line.  The fish was now about 700 yards out and still going!  We had less than 200 yards of line on the reel before the fish settled down and we were only 5 minutes into the fight!  Denise settled into her fight trying to gain a few feet at a time on the marlin.  She fought the fish hard for about 2 hours before her body started to hurt.  Keith and Dusty helped her as she continued the rest of the fight.  The fish went deep and the battle got even harder as she had to deal with a lot of lifting and cranking.  For the last hour (yes, a 3 hour fight time) Keith turned the crank and Dusty held Denise in the chair.  Finally, the fish was at the boat!  The marlin had died during the fight and we had been battling dead weight for about 15 minutes.  The fight had taken us just over 3 hours and we landed her more than 2 miles from where we hooked up!  Denise was exhausted and sore but she hung in there like a champ!  Her 1st ever blue marlin would hit the scales at 673lbs!  That’s a big anniversary present!