Hawaiian GT Action

[Nathan Tsao]

Another one before work this morning. = CHEEE HOOO!!!


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[Ken Uechi]

Damn good work guys!  Looks like the bite is happening at home!

[Charles Cintron]

Howzit Guys,

After a little break and some time catching up on the shorefishing we switched boats and are now fishing out of a 18.5 foot '98 Edgewater CC on Oahu. Took our new boat out yesterday afternoon for a couple of hours to see how she handles the waves and how stable she is during the drifts in gusty winds. I give it a 7 out of 10 can't ask for much out of a smaller boat and very happy with what we have.

Well you'll only have one shot at the first time out with your boat and the boyz made it count especially with short notice. I told the guys,"we can never have this day back, put some fish in the boat lets break her in right!" After stopping for a brief moment so everyone could double check their gear I gave the "War Horse" a good luck rub and setup for the first drift without the usual help of our electronics, i've still got to install a few more equipment. We fished from 330-600pm.

First drift I let the guys go at it as I was more concerned with getting to know the boat better, and the water was really rough so better to hang out and observe how the boat handles. About Seven casts in my buddy Lad Yoshimura hooks into a bruiser, first fish for the boat and first fish for his new Monster Hunter awesome stuff! After taking some pics and releasing it the very next cast my buddy Brian Himalaya hooks into another bruiser. We boat it and for the next hour Brian puts together a "Hat Trick" to end his little vacation from fishing while the other boat was down. As for me I hooked into one towards the end but came off after a couple of boosts, but the boys let me have the honor of tagging the fish on the first trip out with the boat, Mahalo!. Two and a half hours of fishing everyone takes a strike with 6 strikes total and 4 fish boated with the biggest going 117cm.

Hell of a first day out with a short amount of time and great to get behind the wheel and back out into the water driving again. We also got to see two endangered Hawaiian monk seals swimming along side and a baby whale breach about 75 yards in front of us which scared the crap out of me . Time to put the kids on some fish!

Rods
Monster Hunter
PD Zanzibar

Lures
Lunchbox Kaboom- made in Hawaii
PD Mastard Bomb155 (rock beauty)

Aloha

[Charles Cintron]

Went out the past few days on some "School hour runs" and put some fish in the boat. Looks like our topwater bite has died a little and the fish are biting down deep. Hot lures at the moment for us seem to be the carpenter pandora and a locally made lure called the "oddnob" which we fish like a pandora. Not as exciting as getting the bite on top but getting a bite down below is better than nothing at all.

We finally have a recapture on one of our tagged fish! It was caught on the same side of the island with no growth due to the recent tagging of it and unfortunately it was not rereleased but consumed. Oh well but at least we know the fish are surviving after being captured and tagged

The fellows in the pic with the magazine are from left to right Nathan Tsao, B. Funai, and my full time fishing partner Brian Himalaya. B. Funai does research in his spare time, with his last project Tagging 3000 Bonefish for research porposes. Along with Nathan he is a contributing writer to one of our local magazines called Lawaia'a. He was invited to take some R&R with us and get bent on some fish "GT Popping Style" and to tag a few. It was a lot of fun, after hooking into a fish and just before handing him the rod we told him "are you ready!" Ok here you go...... and three seconds later he nearly goes out the boat because of the rocking and tight drag lol. Nathan got a hold of him before he went into the drink and handed me the pole. He gets back up and we tell him to take a deep breath get your bearings and here you go! after bracing himself he did a great job of bringing the fish in the boat and high fives all around, mission accomplished! A bunch of fish caught and lost and a great few days of fishing with some good friends.

Aloha

[Andrew Susani]

Great work guys, that would have been frightening and hilarious to almost have someone pulled overboard.  I have nearly had it happen twice to "GT bunnies" that I have taken out who have hooked up to big fish and nearly lost their balance in some lumpy water with a rampaging beast on the other end.  The power is quite a big shock for the uninitiated.

I am going to have to make a deep sinking GT stickbait... it is on my "to do" list... getting the ballast right so you still have decent action, is the hardest bit.  Do the pandoras and oddnobs have any body roll or tail kick in the water?  or do you have to impart a lot of action using the rod?

I have made two black stickbaits this week that I think Nathan will like the look of... I will post a pic later this arvo for you guys.  I will try and make a few more this weekend and send over one each for you to try and break    I wish they didn't take so long to build!!!

[Nathan Tsao]

This one is from the following day. Charlie was nice enough to let me borrow his Pandora while he went off to work and this nice ulua whacked it down DEEEEP. When our current dies, our topwater bite dies with it, so we need to get down and dredge these fish out from the deep.


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Andrew, cant wait to see what you've got in the works. The Odnob Lures are made by a friend of mine here in Kona, and are essentially an elongated spoon made out of Bond-O resins, lead, and wire. They have a nice flutter on the way down, and a tight wiggle on the way in. The boys over here have caught many GT on them from both the shore and boat.
The Pandora has a wicked side to side action in the water with a little twitching action from the rodtip. On several occasions we've let it sink deep enough that the retrieve is almost vertical (since the boat drifts over it) and the GT are banging them on the way up. On the day of the photos that Charlie posted, i hooked a beast GT on a vertical retrieve when my line was wrapped around my front treble after from a missed strike a few seconds earlier. Unfortunately the hooks popped out of the monster after i turned him, and the lure came up still all tangled from the first missed strike, just poor luck. That lure seems to be deadly on any retrieve from dead slow to wicked fast.
Could you make a stickbait that drops down about 25m deep? That would be a KILLER!

Fellow forum member V Nguyen with a nice fish under miserable topwater conditions. Seeing one on top after two days of dredging them up sure lifted our spirits!


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[Andrew Susani]

Hmmmm well my stickbaits are 220mm long and weigh about 120g without hooks, 140g with a pair of Owner ST76 4/0s and 170lb rings.

or is that 8 and 77/103 inches long and 5 oz in your crazy measurement system LOL 

They sink about 8-12 inches per second, so to make one that can get down to 25m in a bit of current, it is going to have to be super lead heavy... I think it will take a fair bit of work to get it right.  We don't do much dredging here for them, but we do get riproaring tides of 5.5m run every month (up to 6.5m peak run for the year)  so a fast sinker would be handy...

Anyway here are the pics of my latest colour pattern... black is so sexy    I got that 3d foil from that shop at the harbour in Kona... cool stuff!  The bottom one is a 'motor oil' type colouration, different shades of green, blue, purple, yellow depending on the angle you look from.  Nice.  I will be making a few more like this.



And a poofy pink one to try out - seems they were popular over in Oman this season...



The 1.6mm wire might be a problem for you hardcore lunatics    so far so good with our captures... but I did see a very heavy wired Kong eyelet (2.4mm?) bent 90 degrees by a 20kg GT that a mate caught so I guess no wire is foolproof if they get a chance to use their jaw on it as well.

[Alan Syme]

nice fish nathan, too good bro!

[Trevor Skinner]

Andrew,

The pink ones were only popular over here because they matched the couture.

Regards,


Trevor

[Tony Warnett]

Nice one of the stones Nathan 

[Mark Harris]

Great stuff from Hawaii guys. I always enjoy your reports. Keep them coming please .

[Alex Jordan]

Awesome reports - noted you use a conventional reel from the shore for GT's?

Andrew,

The pink ones were only popular over here because they matched the couture.

Regards,


Trevor

LOL Trevor - something us British boys need to be aware of with you Aussies and Saffers? pink?!?!?!?!?!!

[Charles Cintron]

Andrew the measurement is actually 8 and 77.1/103.01 in our crazy measurement system  . Nice lures looking forward to trying one out. If you want me to try and break it I'll have to give it to my son and if it survives a week I'll give you a thumbs up.

That pandora has to be in my top three lures to never leave home without, I only throw it if we don't have any topwater bite but it gets a strike here almost every time we use it. The uluas here just want to kill it and it takes more punishment than any other lure we use, bite marks from head to tail and just mangled! Awesome!

Found out today that the fish we tagged and had recaptured was a guy that I know, it was eaten but not by him.......shark bite !

Thanks Mark, the season never ends in Hawaii lol

[Andrew Susani]

So did you get a t-shirt from the recapture?  I know you were hanging out for one 

Do you want a dark blue back and silver/white belly for the deep stickbait?

Nathan - all black with some sort of red splash somewhere?

[Vinh Nguyen]

Quick GT session with fellow boardmember Charles Cintron while our little ones were in school.  Really hot and uneventful day, but did manage to dredge this one from the deep because our topwater action has slowed to shut down in recent weeks.  Hope the topwater picks up because we're starting to really miss those spectacular explosions  .