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06/27/12

fly fishing and not so fly fishing hawaii:

mark and luke here is your blog... plus moi, bones, peacocks, cats, and other assorted summer fun in hawaii.

 

what can i say, summertime in hawaii.  there may be better places in the world to be, but it ain’t half bad being here.  since the last blog i’ve been doing a little too much fishing (if there is such a thing) and today i finally got a chance to come up for air, catch up, and reload a bit.

 

i spent a few hours bonefishing with e.t., doug, and our new aussie friends from accross the pond bill, craig, and owen.  g’day mates.  i’ve been known to fish a two handed rod now and again and on this day it was my trusty sight/bomb combo the beulah 5/6 classic switch rod, abel switch reel (so far everyone i know who has the abel switch, loves using it on bones!), and elixir line.  add a ten foot polyleader, five or six feet of tippet, and your favorite fly and you have one seriously lethal and fun set up for summertime on hawaiian reef flats.  not being a bite chaser by nature, i decided to fish an area that, for the past month or so, had not been fishing particularly well.  that turned out to be a good idea as i switched up a bunch of fish there.  just goes to show that you never know unless... well by now you should know the rest.  definitely enough to satisfy my (relatively) small need to actually catch bonefish.

 

with that itch scratched,  it was then off to the lake with e.t.  ed hadn’t been to the lake yet this year so he was jonesing to get back there.  the water level has been steadily rising and was much higher than last week when matt and i fished it.  as usual the rising lake tends to slow things down.  i’m not sure why, i just always thought that the fish had to adapt to their new environment.  whatever the reason, fishing was slightly tougher than the previous week, but far from the complete shut down that sometimes happens with water level fluctuations.  when i fish the lake, i usually like to sight fish red devils and let the peacocks come to me.  despite the rise in water level, e.t. and i sight fished a ton of red devils and got into some peacocks as well.  nothing big, just super fun light fly rod stuff.  e.t. hooked one about three pounds but lost it at the boat.

 

i fished a 4wt. g loomis classic glx (did i mention the classic glx rod is the best casting fly rod ever made?) and a now old school orvis cfo 123.  i also fished the sage bass II 230gr. rod and an abel creek 2 reel.  the sage bass rods are ridiculously easy to cast and all models chuck any fly with the greatest of ease.  i highly recommend the bass II rods for beginners looking to get on some of the wahiawa critters with a fly.  these rods are also a great choice to get you through those long days of pounding wood for peacocks or getting a popper into the busting fish that always bust “over there”.  the bass II rods load quick and launch long, two attributes that can be very helpful when chasing peacock bass.

 

yesterday, jim romig and i went out on the lake for another one of our many adventures together.  this time the adventure came in the form of two next gen anglers jim’s grandsons mark and luke.  the lake had risen even more and despite having fifty live comets on our side fishing was... well let’s just say not up to live bait standards.  we toughed it out as all good fishermen do.  with a little persistence and patience we managed to get the boys bit.  as with most kids, eating and driving the boat were probably the highlights of the day for the two boys.  hopefully the fishing part found its place in them as well.  for first and third graders, the boys could cast a spinning rod very well and they have much potential to be really good if they choose to follow the fishermans path.  it was a great day and we all had a really good time.  it was the kind of fun that can only be had by children and immature adults.  fortunately for us, we had both in the boat.  i guess if i had to summarize all that’s been going on in one sentence it would have to be, “so far... so summer.”  i’ll see you on the water.

 

so we've been doing this dinner and dunking thing on mondays after closing the shop.  we buy dinner somewhere and eat it while fishing at assorted urban locals.  roy just happened to be in the shop so we invited him to come with and wouldn't you know it... moi (threadfin).  moi season is closed so we released this one.  remember, it's not what you do when someone's watching, it's what you do when no one's watching.

 

 

 

the bones of summer.

 

sight fishers recognize these pictures.  those just getting started... study them well.

 

 

4wt. g loomis classic glx, orvis cfo 123, fun sized peacocks.

 

summer tuc.

 

e.t.'s first peacock of 2012.

 

black devil.

 

sage bass II 230gr., abel creek 2, little lake chunk. 

 

and, of course, perhaps the perfect light fly rod sight fishing quarry.

 

mark gets his devil on.

 

 

then luke meets tuc.

 

 

i showed mark how to lip a fish on this little peacock.  by the end of the day, he was grabbing everything that came up.  i hope his thumb fared better than mine. i ended up with a pretty good "tuc thumb".

 

nice "tag teamed" largemouth guys.

 

stopped for some cats on the way back...

 

and ended a fun day with this guy that mark caught all by himself from bait to boat.  is there anything better than that?

 

it will be a couple more days of foolin' around for me then a week of shop keeping while sean and the crew head of to get their christmas island fix.  summertime... good times.

 

clay.


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