Fishing for the Summer Halalu Run – August 14, 2011

In the summer months, you may encounter crowds of people lining up shoulder to shoulder on shorelines of embayments, harbors and basins… all over the island, morning til evening. What are these people doing?? Well, it’s likely they’re fishing for the summer Halalu run. WAIT, THE WHAT??

Halalu are juvenile Akule, or Big Eye Scad. Related fish that you may more commonly recognize would be mackerel or saba, and are in the jack family Carangidae. Adults are usually feed further offshore and in deep water, though the young come inshore to feed by the 100,000s(+) after a long larval stage at sea. They commonly feed on zooplankton (often young fishes and crustaceans) in calm areas like harbors and bays in Hawaii, like some of the ones mentioned above on Oahu. They can be eaten or used as bait-fish (dead or alive) for larger game.

Halalu fishing can be a very serious, technical type of fishing. You often have to arrive early, prior to prime feeding periods (near sunrise / sunset), to secure a shoulder width spot during peak weeks in the summer. The gear, tackle and technique can be very specific as well.

Fishermen since “small-kid time” and Halalu enthusiasts, Jung Park and I hit up Waianae Boat Harbor last week as there were rumors of a large school of fish that had come in the week prior… the rumors were definitely true.

There are a few methods to catching Halalu with hook and line (netting / seining in these bays / harbors are typically not allowed). The first would be using long, telescopic poles with floaters. The floaters suspend baited hooks, often with Ika (squid) or aku (skip-jack tuna) belly. The fishermen attract the Halalu near their baits with “Palu,” or the local term for chum. Palu is usually made with, but not restricted to the following: bread, flour, water, sardines, tomato paste, aku belly, etc.

A floater suddenly sinking below the surface of the water means the fish is pulling the bait down. Thus, the fisherman / woman jerks the rod upwards to first set the hook and subsequently lift the fish out of the water.

The other “common” method, which Jung and I prefer, is to “whip” with lures (particularly, Makata brand lures). “Whipping,” at least in Hawaii, is where you cast a weighted line (and lure) and retrieve it in a fashion which mimics movements of natural food of the targeted “predatory” fish. In this case, we often “jig” the rod either quickly or slowly upon retrieving, depending on the type of lure we use. For Halalu, the lure must also retain a specific depth during retrieval to maximize the number of “strikes” you will get while fishing. This may difficult to calculate at first, as the depth of the school may be unknown, or the weight of your lead can affect the depth and speed of retrieval. I have used between 1/4 – 1/2 oz egg leads, which requires rods of various stiffness and length to cast and retrieve them efficiently.

The leader line, or the segment of line between the weight and the lure is long, and should be at least long as the rod in use or as long as 20’… as some Halalu / Akule will be picky and won’t bite shorter leaders. A short leader will often lead to your lead scaring / splitting the school, and a longer leader can be used to dissociate the lure from the lead.  I tend to use ~ 3 to 4 lb. test (break strength) for halalu, and up to 5 lb. test for Akule.

Keep in mind, you lead and lure will sink at different rates when casting (more so with a long leader), so you’ll have to figure out depth / height to correctly present the lure to the fish. Even a small miscalculation in depth can mean the difference between you catching and NOT catching.

As I mentioned earlier, Halalu can also be used as bait-fish. Here, a fellow fisherman hooks up with a large Papio (Juvenile Ulua/Jack/Trevally), which was one of many that were relentlessly attacking the Halalu school. The Papio screams out all of his line and he loses the fish in the reef. Using light tackle / gear and a Halalu for bait, a hooked fish even 2-3 lbs is very difficult to land from shore.

After the sun goes down, the Halalu school usually starts heading out of the harbor and nocturnally feed off shore…

They do come back in the early morning though, and is when the fishermen and fisherwomen return to start another day fishing for the summer Halalu run.

Besides fishing, another great thing about fishing down on the west side is the spectacular sunsets.

No reason why one shouldn’t snap a few photos in between “coolered” fish or after the school heads offshore.

What a great day.