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03/26/10

all things fly fishing in hawaii:

”the chicken chuckers”

 

not a whole lot to report.  gave the bones a rest and have been doing a little scouting around and getting my gear dialed in for the (quickly) upcoming papio (trevally) season.  despite it’s generally low return/effort ratio compared to bonefish here on oahu, i am going to give it a real concerted effort this year.  there are a  few of the nwff crew (sean, deano, and craig) who sometimes get a little weary of fly fishing bones all the time and are devoting more time to chasing some tougher to get critters (on oahu at least) with the long rod such as the trevally.

 

so deano, craig, and i have sort of loosely banded together and become a faction of the nwff crew known as “the chicken chuckers”.  although far from an expert on the subject, the rod i have been using lately on the quest for anything jack and jack related on oahu has been the sage 8129-4 z-axis two handed rod with a 480 gr. airflo scandi compact.  it may be a little on the light side for the bigger fish but it is really easy to cast big flies long distances repeatedly and gives me a chance to practice my spey casting as a bonus.  deano likes the beulah 9/10 switch rod with the matching elixir line.  i think craig has settled in on the beulah 9/10 surf rod with a 12wt rio outbound short (after getting wrecked by about a fiftteen pound g.t. with his 7/8 beulah switch).

 

so i spent a day scouting around k bay with greg “pops” with not much success.  we knew it was probably a little early but sometimes you just gotta scratch the itch.  greg hooked a nice three pound white on a jig but it unbuttoned right at the boat.  the rest of the day was “ala alas” as he would say.  fished hickam a couple of times with the newly formed “chicken chuckers”.  out of those sessions i managed to squeeze out a little omilu (bluefin trevally) and jumped an awa a’ua (ladyfish).  not much for hours of pounding but that appears to be the trevally fly rod game in hawaii (at least until we figure more stuff out).  it takes some hardcore pounding to get bit, but like i always say after a day of catching nothing, i’m that many casts closer to hooking the next one.  when you fish for trevally with a fly rod on oahu you may catch a jack, you may get jacked by a jack, but more often than not, you'll go home not catching jack.

 

 

how those guys get underwater photos of fish... i'll never know.

 

deano put on a bonefish fly for five minutes before we left one day and the bones showed us what we were foregoing on the quest for trevally.

 

releasing my "catch of the week".  i've caught alot of trevally on the fly over the years but most of them have been while fishing for bones.  there's just something a bit more satisfying about working hard to catch the fish you want the way you want to catch it, no matter how small it may turn out to be.  that's just part of the magic of fly fishing.  i wouldn't trade this little guy in for ten ten pound bones... but that's just me.  good times.

 

clay. 


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