Kona Hawaii fishing report - Archive -

Kona Hawaii fishing report - July '05

Kona is doing what Kona is famous for. Producing a whole lot of Pacific Blue marlin. The summer is the peak season for blues here and there's several tournaments going on also. Tournaments make finding the bite and counting the catch results off Kona easier because it's all broadcasted on the VHF radio. Tournament boats are required to call in their hook-ups, fights, fish landed or tagged so if one particular area has a bunch of fish biting, the information gets out immediately. Under normal circumstances, VHF radio is rarely used to talk to our other fishing friends. We all use cell phones so no one else can listen in so a hot bite in an area can generally go unreported to the majority of the fleet 'til the end of the day when we're all lookin' to see who's flying the fish flags and the "dock talk" goes around about where the action was. Many of us who tag and release marlin and fillet out our smaller fish don't even report the event to The Fuel Dock who keeps the best daily catch board of the fish weighed in and also lists tagged fish if the boats report it to them. Their catch board is a good general indicator if the bite is good or slow but it's always yesterdays news and leaves out the most important piece of information. Where's the bite? Right now it really doesn't matter where you go because the marlin are everywhere. There does seem to be a pattern of the bigger ones in close and the smaller ones on the outside though.

While I was on vacation (end of June / beginning of July) I heard that the yellowfin tuna bite got so good that the fish buyers didn't even want them anymore. Yellowfin isn't something you would normally release because it's the highest dollar fish we have here but if there are no buyers….. Yes, I heard that some were released because they were just too hard to get rid of. There are a few mahi mahi around but I guess we should just give up on seeing any kind of an ono run happen this summer.

Because of my vacation I was also only going by hear-say about the bottom bite. I hear that the sharks have been in full force making it hard to catch any of the good eating stuff like snapper or grouper. I've done a few drops since I've been back and didn't have too much of a problem hooking up to amberjack, almaco jack, palani and snapper. I only had a couple of shark bites so maybe the main shark population has moved on. I hope not! If it's a big fish fight you're looking for, a good size shark can really put an angler to the test!

See 'ya on the water,
Capt. Jeff Rogers
http://FISHinKONA.com