May started out kind of slow as far as the trolling bite is concerned but has been VERY good lately. Statistically the mahi mahi bite should be slowing down by now but we’re having the best bite we’ve seen with them so far this season. The same is true for the spearfish bite. Even though it’s not ono season, there’s still a pretty decent bite going on with them too. We’re just entering yellowfin tuna season and there have been a bunch caught recently. Hopefully this is a sign of another good (we’ve had several in a row) season for them. The blue marlin bite is slow right now but as I stated in last month’s report, there’s very little fishing effort going on. I normally take Memorial Day off and ride around the island on my Harley with a motorcycle club but I made the mistake of booking a fishing trip before I knew it was Memorial Day. I was OK with missing the ride but I wasn’t looking forward to the crowd of private and charter boats on the water for the holiday. I was kind of shocked! I hardly saw any other boats the whole day. Tourism is still way down and I’m sure the price of fuel kept many private boats off the water. I guess that was good for us though because with no competition, we had every lure we were running bit and we ended up catching several fish.
The bottom bite has been pretty good although catching the bait fish has been difficult at times. I’ve been catching a lot of sharks lately and I’m pretty good with my shark identifications but I caught one a couple of months ago that I couldn’t identify. I caught that same shark about a week later and another one just like it but a little smaller. Since then I’ve caught even more of them but still don’t have a clue as to what kind it is. This I can say about them though, they put up one hell of a fight! They run between 130 and 180 lbs. and when they get near the boat, they get extremely mean and are looking to kick some butt. Sharks are an excellent sportfish to fight because unlike most fish, they usually don’t get tired during the fight so the real challenge begins near the end of the fight at the boat when the angler is tired and the shark isn’t. I even feel sorry for some of the anglers because I’m sure that they had no idea what they were getting themselves into when they envisioned a relaxing day of fishing in Hawaii and instead, ended up with one of the most physically exhausting challenges of their life.
