North Shore Hanapa'a Fishing Tournament

The two day tournament was held on July 12^th and 13^th out of our home port Haleiwa Harbor. The grand prize is for total weight. On day one of the tournament we had local residents, the Pohina family, charter the boat and participate in the tournament. We had two Ahi bites on the first day. We pulled hooks on the first one, and landed an 81.5# Ahi. 81.5 points is not much for a two day total weight tournament, but it is points on the board. with no charters scheduled for day 2, the crew consisted of our full time deck hand Eric, my old friend Rob, and I. We started off our morning by catching a nice sized ono. About 8am we land a small blue marlin. The crew is feeling good cause that is some decent points on the board. We catch another ono heading into deeper water. At about 9:30 am we catch a 96# Ahi. The crew is pumped cause we are one fish away from getting a clean sweep. There is a prize payout for the team that catches all of the flag fish: Ono, Marlin, Ahi, and Mahi. My friend Burt, captain of the Tuia, is the only boat that I have seen in the area all day. He calls to see what we are catching. I tell him about our catch and mention that we are looking for a Mahimahi to complete a clean sweep. It turns out that he is only two miles away, and that he is fishing around a small crate that is holding mahimahi. In exchange for the location of where we caught our Ahi, he agrees to wait at the crate so that we might catch a mahi mahi. I pick up the binos and can see him two miles away. When we get closer we see Burt pointing in the water at the crate. The mahi have stopped biting trolling lures, so we set out dead bait, and instanty catch a 26 lbs mahimahi completing the clean sweep. At this point we were heading downsea in idle, packing the Mahimahi in the fishbox, when the outrigger takes off Screaming. With line peeling off the reel, we know its a big fish. In a few minutes we boat a nice 120# ahi. At this moment we realize that we may be in the running for the grand prize, and we still have 2 and a half hours to fish. We didnt get any more bites, but were super happy to catch a clean sweep. As it turned out, we won the grand prize for total weight with a small margin of 40 lbs. We also took home the clean sweep award, for a total of 10 grand in prize money. Our total weight for the two day tournamnt was 463 lbs. We caught 3 Ahi, 1 marlin, 1 mahimahi, and 2 ono