Kayak Fishing the Waianae Coast

After watching an episode of Hawaii Goes Fishing on “Kayak Fishing,” I was quite eager to take my fishing-rigged kayak offshore on the Waianae Coast. If you saw that episode with the “AquaHunters“, I’m sure you’d have done the same…

Packing ~ 20 frozen Halalu’s (juvenile Akule / Big-eye Scad) we caught a few weeks earlier from the summer run at Waianae Boat Harbor, Luke and I thought we would have a decent chance of success in catching some bigger game / pelagic fish.

After mounting the kayak on my car, we launched from Waianae Boat Harbor on a sunny Saturday morning. The kayak was equipped with two poles/reels, pole-holders and cables which secured each reel to the hull, tackle, hand-gaff, net and a bait-filled cooler… amongst other supplies. The two reels had 20 lb. test monofilament Stren, with 40 lb test leader line and spreader bar (10 oz lead) at the swivel. I know this is light-tackle for the type of fish we were targeting (Ono / Wahoo, Mahimahi / Dolphinfish, Uku / Grey Snapper, Ulua / Trevally), but my logic was that we’d at least get more strikes than if we used wider-diameter/heavier lb. test line.

We paddled ~ 1.5 miles from shore and boat harbor and let the wind / current carry us further out. Once we got to ~ 2 miles, we paddled in diagonally ~ 0.25 – 0.5 miles and fished again… following the same pattern, zig-zagging, as we headed to Makaha. Rigged with halalu, the lines were dropped to bottom and retrieved ~ 20′ – 30′, at a depth which was > 100′. We did this for ~ 6 hours and ~ 8 miles of fishing/paddling… and guess what?

EPIC FAILURE!!! We returned to the Waianae Boat Harbor exhausted and with an empty cooler. From the videos we saw, it appeared we were in the same area… distance from as well as location along the shore. Maybe we need to start earlier in morning and hit the peek crepuscular feeding patterns… but still, we should have overlapped times with at least part of the day when the video documented… I swear… those “Aquahunters” made it look waaaayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy easier than it actually was. I know the episode aired a while back… maybe the area got fished out since there was so much publicity from the TV show? If not, please provide constructive criticism to what we were doing wrong, or helpful info about rigs/tackle/location. *sigh*

UPDATE: I guess the first time was just tough luck, because we’ve been much more successful on future kayak trips. This Kagami (Threadfin Jack) was caught and released just after taking the picture.

Mahalo for visiting and come back soon!!!