Further information ...
 

06/25/10

bonefishing hawaii:

summer fun for everyone.

 

what can i say except now’s the time we’ve all been waiting for.  for fly fishermen in hawaii, it is the most wonderful time or the year.  since the last blog, it’s been nothing but superb hawaii weather and the fish know it.  this past week i’ve fished all around our little island.  i can honestly say that right now there is no one “hot spot” as i have found bonefish all over.  the fishing has been the same amount of “goodness” for both sight fishing a single hand rod or bombing two handers.  i have also heard good reports from happy customers who fished other spots that i have not gotten around to fishing this summer... yet.  the bonus to it all is that whether you get fish or not, you’ll get treated to the best beautiful water and weather hawaii has to offer.  the full moon is on saturday and we will probably see a temporary little change in the weather which may make for an interesting weekend.  the tide will be a fast and mighty one in the afternoon.  “they” are also calling for variable winds which often makes for cloudier days (bombers delight, sight fisher nemesis), spookier fish, but easier casting for all involved.  rest assured though that many more exceptional hawaii days will be right around the corner.

 

on another note, thanks to nelson ishiyama (owner of the henry’s fork lodge in idaho) for giving us that little shout out in the latest issue of “fly fishing in saltwater magazine”.  as most of you who know us know, sean and i are a couple of pretty low key dudes.  we and the nwff crew are fishermen first and kind of let everything in life after that fall into place as they will.  we are not the “soap box totin’, horn tootin'” type and that’s just the way we roll.  still, it is always nice to get some props. that, as forrest gump would say is all i have to say about that.

 

 

this week there were yellow spots...

 

and bones here...

 

and there.

 

e.t.'s client sean got four bones on this day.

 

i ran into jay out at ke'ehi enjoying the summer doing what the nwff crew does best.

 

eric got his first hawaii bonefish on the fly and kelly, his wife, got her first bonefish on the fly ever (her pic to come later).  the couple kicked off their one year anniversary in style.

 

it's summer time "smile for a while and lets be jolly.  we shouldn't be so melancholy.  come along and share the good times while we can." kon kan

 

clay.

 

 

 

06/17/10

fly fishing hawaii:

doing thangs a little different (tenkara and poppers for papio).

 

the same flats, the same single hand rod, look around, spot a bone, cast to it and it eats (or doesn’t)... moocho good times no doubt, but sometimes it just gets a little run on and you end up thinking, ”there’s gotta be more than this.”  this is the funk i get into quite frequently.  sure, there are more places in the world to fly fish than could be fished in ten lifetimes.  i, unfortunately, am a bit travel challenged mentally, physically, and financially (mostly the latter) as i suspect most folks out there are. fly fishing is still the perfect passion for me.  there’s never a shortage of new flies to come off the vise, new gear and techniques to try and different ways of fly fishing (even here in hawaii).  a very few will be able to master even one aspect of the sport in their lifetime.  most (like me) just roam the fly fishing landscape like cain in “kung fu” learning lessons as we go along and possibly teaching a few lessons along the way as well.  not a bad existence.  kind of like jules wanted to do in “pulp fiction”.  what vincent referred to as a “bum”.

 

this driving force to try different things is the reason that i have been catching an inordinate amount of bones with a two handed rod as of late.  it’s also what makes sean chuck flies in the dark and for me, craigy, and “pops” to give tenkara a try this past week up at the lake.  tenkara is an ancient form of fly fishing that uses a furled line connected to a long hand pole and flies,  similar to the way the old english fly dudes used to fish (check out www.tenkarausa.com for more info).  beyond that, i know nothing about tenkara.  i am an expert of good times, however, and tenkara definitely qualifies.  you can bet i’ll be learning more about it and doing it again soon.

 

kirksta whipped up this papio (trevally) during the kbay after dark session.  old school daiwa bg... nice.

 

sean caught this menpachi papio (bigeye trevally) and the kirksta also hooked this rogue solo akule (bigeye scad).  wish i was there guys but, it's a little past my bedtime.

 

i've spent many nights in my younger year chucking flies at night (extremely good times).  for those who want to give the night time chuck a go, try attaching the smallest glow stick to the end of your fly line at the line/leader connection.  i've found that it greatly helps when casting and fishing in the dark.

 

the next day sean continued his assault on the bay with a 7wt. sage xi3 and a crease fly.

 

craigy got his tenkara on with this peacock.

 

"pops" came out and gave the tenkara a try too.

 

althought the lake wasn't fishing real well, the tenkara set ups made catching my favorite red devils and the now rampant little bleugs (bluegills) both challenging and fun.

 

tired of doing the same thing all the time?  if you take the time to smell one of the numerous fly fishing roses, it's never hard to find good times.

 

clay. 

 

 

 <

06/06/10

bonefishing hawaii:

the comedy hour.

 

got out on the water a couple of times since the last blog.  this summer is turning out to be pretty sporatic as far as fish goes.  there are fish everywhere but the amount and their mood varies greatly from day to day and spot to spot.  it’s the kind of time where there's no real consistent hot spots (at least none that i know of).  if you get lucky and hit a spot and day when there are a lot of fish great, but don’t be surprised if the area doesn’t hold up the next day.  the good news is that it is summer and there are fish all around the island and the conditions are beautiful.  some days you just need to fish harder or longer to get one or two.

 

on friday i went out with e.t. to ke’ehi, we first fished the rat and as we were walking out we both noticed how eerily dead the reef seemed.  nothing was moving around and there was no life of any kind to be seen.  it reminded me of this one night that a friend of mine and i went diving.

 

back in the day my buddy and i would just jump in the water and split up (extremely stupid... but we were young and dumb and tempting natural selection as all young creatures are supposed to).  anyway, the reef was completely void of life and i got an eerie feeling which was strange because we used to dive at this beach all the time.  i stuck it out for a while but i couldn’t shake the feeling that something was just not right.  so finally i thought, screw this i’m out of here.  i don’t believe in ghost but i also don’t disbelieve.  i just don’t want to find out until i become one (or not).  i went in to shore and sat on the sand and tried to locate my friends dive light.  i finally saw it coming towards me from down the beach, he was walking toward me on the beach.  turns out that he also felt weird and got out of the water several hundred yards down from where i was.  the next day we found out from another friend that someone saw a big tiger shark in that exact place during the day...  the lesson?  listen to what i call the sixth sense, it’s a lot smarter than you think.

 

well this time it was not as dangerous but my spidey sense was tingling and telling me that i was in the wrong place at the wrong time.  for scientific purposes, i bombed it for a while but the feeling made me change my game plan and i moved around much more than i normally would.  i did manage to hook two bones but it was like pulling teeth as they say.  e.t. walked his usual trek around the flat and reported back having seen very few fish scattered around, similar to my assessment of the situation.  so we went to the triangle.  there i put my switch rod away and walked with e.t.  there were more fish there but not gangbusters either.  we took turns alternating hooking fish with his g. loomis crosscurrent glx 8wt.  it turned out to be the most hilarious fun time either of us has had bonefishing in a while.

 

at one point e.t. mentioned  how he hates it when you spot a fish for a client and the client casts and then you lose sight of the fish.  i told him yeah but sometimes you’re looking for it and bam the client gets bit. right as i said that we spotted a fish, he cast, we lost it in the glare, e.t. said “where’d it go?” and well you know what happened next. 

 

then on another fish, i hooked it and put the gas to it as i like to do to keep it from going down and off the edge.  when it hit the reel i thought to myself “good, e.t. keeps his drag super tight just as i like it.  i “jumped” the fish and then started to try to crank it in left handed.  i couldn’t crank it, so i handed the rod to ed thinking that i just couldn't overcome the weight of the fish with my left hand.  i handed it to him, he took it and he couldn’t crank it either.  the line had wrapped around the outer frame of the reel and we didn’t even know it.

 

later, e.t. made a cast to a good sized bone it came over to the fly and e.t. set up on it.  the fish just sat there for a few seconds and we were both waiting for the fish to take off.  sometimes bigger ones do that as they don’t really know what’s going on when you first stick them with the hook.  i call it the big fish wiggle.  the next thing we knew the fish slowly turned and swam away... e.t. was hooked on a rock.

 

between those follies and making jokes about each other’s choice of fly and presentations we laughed so hard that ed was wheezing.  we ended up only landing one small fish that i hooked and e.t. fought and brought in, the others were lost to assorted mishaps resulting from just horsing around too much.  at the end of “comedy hour” as ed put it, he had hooked three and i had hooked two with no fish showing up on my last at bat.  as we walked back to the boat ed, still laughing, reflected on how many things had gone wrong that caused us to lose almost all of the fish that we hooked.

 

“it’s like you always say clay,” e.t. said. “sometimes like that.”

 

fittingly, this is one of the photos i took during the "comedy hour".

 

there, that's better.  two clowns and a tag teamed bone.

 

the next day wasn't any better out at hi kai, but the summer weather is great and there are fish around.  it's still the best time of the year to get out on the water and enjoy... good times.

 

clay.


Top of page

"Nervous Water Fly Fishers- your guide to fly fishing in Hawaii"