My three children Fisher, Kai and Marina all attend Innovations Public Charter School here in Kona. We invited a 6th grade student (Yuto) from their sister school in Tokushima, Japan to spend the weekend at our house to experience living in Hawaii. We had plans to go surfing but the waves just weren’t big enough so the boys hopped on board the Lepika for a few hours of fishing at one of the nearby buoys. We ran to VV buoy which had been holding some small skipjack tuna (aku)
and ahi. I didn’t see much surface activity but I did mark several nice piles of ahi deep so we pulled out the jigs. Our first drop yielded nothing which led me to believe something big was also around the buoy…a shark? Marlin? On the next drop we started getting bit! Yuto was first up and he fought his first ahi to the boat! After a few more drops we got into more small ahi in the 10lb range…everyone got to pull in at least one ahi. We also got to see what we believe was a big marlin ball-up the tuna around the buoy and start feeding. Satisfied with our catch, we pulled the lines and ran back to the harbor to take Yuto to the beach for some body boarding! On the way in we saw not one, but two huge manta rays swimming near the harbor. It was the perfect ending to a fun few hours on the Lepika! Hopefully the rest of his class will enjoy some fresh ahi fillets tomorrow!
