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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.

Martha got her spear! It was an exciting finish to a good week of fishing. The number of fish we saw last year and this year combined was something. I think the best  plan is to try for spearfish everyday and we will see all of the blues,stripes and ahi we always look for. The spearfish once again showed us how rare they are. We saw a few but had to catch her fish with an hour left to go in her trip. It made it really exciting. this completes her slam- Congrats!

Day 2 was very slow. We had a lame  bite at something small maybe a spear but probably and small mahi. The morning of day 3 was slow but picked up for the fleet in the afternoon. We raised a nice blue on the short bait. Tracy saw it and said it look about 200. It came up between the short bait and the short rigger and grew as it surfaced. It turned out to be easy 600 pounds. She made a fast move to the outside of the spearfish lure we had on 50 pound test on the short rigger and nailed the lure from the outside in. Awesome bite! It lasted for 30 seconds of the reel screaming and without a jump in free spool we broke her off. Martha did great, the fish was just too fast for us. I got trolling again and the lures were still out. We were reeling in the broken line when we had another big bite. This one turned out to be a nice tuna. It would seem that marlin was following these tuna. I marked 4 more on my screen while we fought the tuna.

The pressure cooker to catch spears began today with Martha and Larry. if you remember last year Martha came to catch a spearfish to finish her billfish slam for the IGFA club. it is the rarest billfish in the world and last year it proved to be. We had a great week of fishing catching 6 blues and 8 stripeys. On the the blues was 650 on 50 and the biggest hit the boat and died weighing 740. The video of this is to the right of the page. Pretty awesome watching the fish hit the boat like that. Last year we had a spear to the boat but pulled the hook with 30 yards to go. We saw a blue and 2 spears but didn’t catch any of them today all we landed was a small mahi. A good start with nothing to show for it.

We went out today for a shake down cruise and see how the boat fishes here in Kona. It had done well in Costa Rica and in its travels but we will see how she does here. It was Sunday and a perfect day to put the spearfish lures out and see if we could catch my girls something. We had a great time and got a ton of bites on small fish. Perfect day for the girls and good to see what the boat trolled like. It really felt good,very smooth and very comfortable. Here you see uncle Rob and uncle Mitch holding up tuna the girls caught.

This morning we found the sheep coming down from the top. They were headed straight makai and it showed me that I was too early the day before. Our timing today was just right. We were running a little late and it proved to be a blessing. We saw a few coming down and a few turned into a bunch in a short time. We hiked into where I though they were headed and we waited for them to come down. It turned out to be a situation where we were too close to them and we didn’t get to look at them long. We had 5 big rams in our range the smallest right at our feet at 12 yards. A little lamb jumped up on a rock at 5 yards and had to run off. The sheep got restless and we had to decide which of the 5 we were going to take. It was a harder shot for Rick but he had to twist around to make the shot but took this nice mufflon black hawaiian cross. The other sheep we passed on were nice but they are still there for next time.