Fishing in Hawaii: D's ulua

This past summer, my cousin Joshua was reporting good action at one of his secret spots on Oahu's windward coast. He and his crew were bringing up good-sized white papio and I wanted to jump on the bandwagon and try my luck at bringing home some fresh sashimi. I gave Derek a call on the cell and it was on.

We arrived at the "spot" just after sundown and quickly set up for the night. The tide was dropping, but would bottom out at about 11 pm, giving us plenty of time to fish the rising tide throughout the night. Our target fish was papio in the 3-5lb. range so we only brought our lighter shorecasting gear (biggest rig was penn 950). After casting out our poles baited with fresh night-tako, we settled in and started on some liquid refreshments (green bottles-cheehuu). As the stars came out and the beers went down, we had only the occasional puhi to our name and thoughts of coming home empty-handed began to creep in. Little did we know we were in for a big surprise.

At about 10:30 pm Derek's 12' nitro (which happened to be 10 feet from our camp) took a big hit. His pole practically bent in half as his penn 850 loaded with 30lb. test j-line screamed in protest. Hanapa'a!!! D rushed to his pole, yanked it out of the sandspike, and basically just held on as line poured out of his reel. "It's a biggie!", I yelled out in excitment as the ulua's initial run instantly gave us both the notion this was no 5-pounder.

The fish headed out and to the right, seemingly making a beeline for open water. Just as thoughts of sashimi and fried-panko-coated fillets entered my mind, D's mainline got hung upon a coral head waaaay out there. About a week or two earlier, I had a similar strike which ended up in the same situation. Hung up on the coral head my fish broke off much to my disappointment. Realizing the similarity of the situation, I suggested he head right around the point to get a better angle on the fish and possibly get off that coral head. After stumbling through the shorebreak and rocks, Derek was able to get a good angle on this mini-beast. Although the angle was good, the line was still hung up. We stood in the darkness praying that every rub on that piece of coral was not the last. It was a stale mate as D could not apply too much pressure for fear of breaking off, yet not wanting to give up any more line. Just as frustration and fatigue began to set in (20 min. fight so far), Derek felt a "pop" as the mainline released from the coral head. Cheehuu! It was on. D began to pump the rod and the 30 lb. test mono began to refill the spool. By this time the ulua was pretty spent and Derek said it felt like dead weight, a lot of it.

After a tiring 30 min battle, the fish was close to shore and we caught our first glimpse of the fish as its side shimmered in the beams of our head lamps. Whoooweeee!!!! I did a pretty bad job of being the net man (tail first, then just drag em' up on the beach by the leader), but who told D to catch a fish bigger than the net. Haha.