September is always an interesting month to report about for a couple of reasons. The first being that September is the slowest tourist season of the year so there is a lot less fishing effort from the Kona charter fleet, myself included. The other interesting thing about September is that it is kind of a between-season month. By that I mean that the peak of the season for the blue marlin, ahi, skipjack tuna and ono has passed and the fall mahi mahi bite along with the beginning of the winter bigeye tuna bite isn’t quite due yet. I’ve always made the statement that fish don’t know how to read a calendar and that they’re also like party guests. They don’t always show up when they should and sometimes they still hang around when they’re supposed to leave. The marlin and the ahi bite remained pretty good this month with several big ones both landed and released. The ahi bite was pretty good too. The ono bite near the harbor was pretty dead all summer long but the commercial fishermen have been doing quite well with them way down South and this month was no different than the past few months. The bigeye tuna started biting even near the end of August and only got more abundant in September. The bigeye tuna that were that were on F buoy last month got cleaned out by bottlenose dolphins but are now making a comeback. The bigeyes sure are early this year. Mahi mahi are fast becoming the most common catch of the day even though it’s just a little early for the run to start. The fall mahi mahi run usually produces a bigger average size catch than with the spring run. There should be some hot mahi mahi action in October.
The current finally switched to its usual North direction so I started taking the small bigeye tuna that I’ve been catching on F buoy and using them for bait on my favorite bottom fishing grounds. It can sometimes take quite a while for the bottom fish to start congregating back up on the North ledge by the airport after the current has switched and although I’ve been catching a good mixed bag, shark, GT and amberjack, the bite has been slower than it should be during a North current. Just like pelagic fish, bottom fish don’t know how to read a calendar either. They don’t need to. They read the current conditions. A condition that I currently find a whole lot more ambiguous than seasonal shifts.
