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Jim Shockey of “Jim Shockey Outdoors” Hunted with Pat Fisher of Fisher Outfitters and got these nice animals on camera. They filmed Jim and Pat in action while I was in Florida finishing off the Hawaiian Slam the day I got back. They were done hunting early and we were able to get them out fishing. We had a nice day with Jim’s wife Louise and cameraman Todd. We tried for a big one but didn’t have any bites all day. They are coming back on their way back to Canada so we are going to try to give it another try. Look for Jim show on the Outdoor channel and on Versus. I will post when the shows will air. They had great hunting should be a great show to watch.

I was able to finally fish for the last billfish species that I needed to have caught all of the billfish that can be caught in the world and got it! We have been finishing all of these slams for our guests, catching the spearfish here in Kona and I realized that all I needed was to catch an Atlantic sail to get the slam done myself. I figured out that there are 12 to catch in the world Some are the same just in different oceans. There are some strange ones that we have caught for clients like the hatchet and the round scale spear that we caught while fishing Madeira. I had a Pacific Blue, Atlantic Blue,a striped marlin,white marlin,atlantic swordfish,Pacific swordfish,long billed spearfish,shortbilled spearfish,Pacific sailfish,hatchet marlin,round scale spearfish. All I needed was a Atlantic sail. I had never fished for them before and this was the trip I was able to make it out with the David family and Capt Jimmy and his family Debbie,James and Laurel, and mate Wes got one for me. We kite fished for them with 6 lines and it was really cool to see how it was was done. The action on all of the other game was fun as well. We caught Mahi Mahi, Mackeral,snappers and skip jacks as well as 2 more sails. For action packed fishing near Miami you have to see Jimmy and Wes on the Land H. If you have been following the posts Jimmy and his family caught Rob and I 2 swords in one night on our last trip to Florida. With the records in the IGFA book so big and hard to get the slam club is something interesting to participate in. If you are looking for an Atlantic sail and a sword Jimmy and Wes are you guys. Land H sportfishing(954)966-2317 Thanks a lot Jimmy, Debbie,James and Laurel.

Kona Tournament still available. Go to our inquiry section and email me to see what is still open.

Great to see everyone at the show. I wish my camera shot better pictures in the dark. My flash wasn’t working so I didn’t get to take many pictures. This one was taken of Capt John Kelmer and I by Tracy Melton. Johnboy runs the Grander for Tracy in Madeira Portugal. I took the Grander over to Madeira for Tracy in 2007. Johnboy fished with me at the end of season and was chosen to run the boat. He has run the boat for Tracy the last 2 seasons and has had really good fishing. My crew Tracy Epstein teamed up with Johnboy last season and did very well. The Grander is the Melton International Tackle company boat and has fished mostly in Maderia so far. To follow Johnboy and the Grander go to Melton Tackle.com and see the big ones they caught last summer as well as follow them day to day as they post their fishing next season.

The first Billfish Expo was organized by Capt Skip Smith who put together a group of captains from around the world to speak on the different species of Billfish and the techniques used to catch them. I found that it was really interesting to hear the other captains and boats builders speak about their specialty area. One of the hightlights for me was to see the top boat builders standing next to each other on stage. Roy Merritt,Paul Spencer and John Bayliss along with the builders of Viking and Tribute all there together at once. Really interesting to have the opportunity to see everyone there in the same room. Some of the pros that were featured came and went throughout the day due to other speaking they were doing that day. For me the most well presented was done by Steve Lassley and Pete Grosbeck of Team Bad Company. Their presentation on Striped Marlin was very well done and showed the differences of the West Coast style works for them. Steve’s presentation on electronics  was also very well done. The pictures of what to look for on the screens was good for everyone to see. Karl Anderson’s input helped to validate the info.Even though it is common to us it was good for the audience to see what the manuals and speaking is try to show.Professor Arthur Mariano did a very interesting talk on Billfish science that opened my eyes on a few things as well as point out that there is no way to get some of the data that is out there. We have paid for the research with our tax dollars and it needs to be shown to us. For now it is held for a number of years before it is made public. He encouraged everyone to try to make an effort to make this info public sooner. All the areas were well covered and Skip did a great job hosting the event asking good questions to the featured speakers. Over all a success. It was flattering to be included this year. Great to see old friends and be around the buzz of the boat show. For more info on the Billfish Expo go to www.Billfishexpo.com.

Ed Grace got this nice fish early to round off a great trip. 4  blues in 2 days. While I was in the air to Florida Rob and Tracy trolled their way to the grounds where we had the action yesterday and before they could get there they had a great bite on the long corner. We had been running our summer pattern and had been trolling over fish and not getting them to come up. We worked hard on the pattern all week and finally Tracy found what they wanted. Our friends had been doing on the purple wide range softhead and he was able to make the change and got this nice one to bite. A lot of the time it is east to get stuck in our ways and keep the lures out the same everyday saying “We just have to run over a hungry one’. The hardest is to make the changes needed to get the bite. If we never tried new things all the time we would have never come this far. Making the adjustments is key. In this case it paid off with a nice one. Unfortunately the fish died and didn’t survive. It was donated on shore to a local charity.

Ed Grace was out with us today. He is an interesting guy that works for the Dept of Fish and Wild life. He proved to have the hot hand this week. With the action that we saw yesterday at the grounds we trolled up to the top corner and looked for the bait that we saw. We tried to livebait right away but the porpoise stole our baits. We went trolling outside the ledge and caught a fish right away on a Polu Kai bullet on the stinger. Tracy put some wings on it and has really been working. We checked the ledge later and found there was no porpoise or boats so we got a bait and tried our luck. I marked 3 fish while we were trolling and went to the spot with the baits and got one to bite right away. We went back in and got a second one right away right on the spot. The fourth one got away right before we left spitting the bait out as we struck the fish. I hated to leave but had to catch a flight to Florida to participate as a speaker at the Billfish Expo in Florida tonight.

Richard Nimmer got his first Blue Marlin with us today on the grounds. It was a unreal sight for us to see blues feeding all over the surface eating Oi Oi or bullet tuna off of the surface like tuna feeding in the dolphins. We had been marking the fish on the sounder but finally we saw them with our eyes. We changed our lures to baits and began live baiting. It took longer that I thought to get bit but we had 2 blues fighting over the bait and got this one to bite. Good to see the grounds looking so good.

This was the good side of this fish. We had the whole other side eaten by the sharks. It was a good blind bite again meaning there was no sign around when we got the bite. jaws found the fish and had to pay our taxes early.

Scott Snipes got this nice little stripey. We released him seconds after with the remora still on him. Great to see the stripeys coming in.