Recreation
Hooked on going deep

By Daniel Washburn
Gainesville (Ga.) Times

The phone rang and rang. But it remained unanswered.

Garry Orender of Cherry Valley, Calif., right, and Eric Nourrie of Honolulu show off a 20-pound sport-billed spearfish. Dan Washburn • Gainesville (Ga.) Times

I was admiring the porpoises when it happened. There were dozens of them, and they splashed in and out of the deep blue waters of the Pacific Ocean, many miles off the coast of O'ahu.

I wondered aloud if the presence of porpoises portends the presence of fish. I soon had my answer.

Line screamed from one of the six rods trolling the water off the boat's stern. A fish — a rather large one — had taken the bait, and was trying to swim away with it. That's when the phone started ringing.

The particular rod and reel responsible for all of the racket was assigned to 28-year-old Michelle Hickman, of Irvine, Calif., and she promptly plopped herself inside the lone chair that is the centerpiece of the 50-foot boat's deck.

The chair is a throne of sorts, in which the seated is king or queen for however long the fish decides to fight.

Hickman's reign lasted 24 minutes and was full of sweat, grimaces and anticipation. The result was a 135-pound ahi, and it hit the deck with a loud thud.

At first there was silence from the rest of us. We simply stared at the behemoth. Then the celebrating began.

It was our third fish of the morning, and easily the largest. The tuna was round and robust and weighed a good bit more than the person who reeled it in.

Brian Dominguez, 27, of Atlanta fights with a 100-pound ahi on a recent excursion aboard the Magic. Dan Washburn • Gainesville (Ga.) Times

"My legs are shaking," Hickman said. "I thought it was going to pull me over the side."

Yes, Hickman caught a big one. But just about everything about deep-sea fishing in Hawai'i is big.

The reels are the size of paint buckets. They hold hundreds and hundreds of yards of thick 130-pound test line. Some of the lures are more than a foot long, and feature hooks you might expect to see at the end of a pirate's arm.

But a mere foot is nothing compared to the size of the fish some ocean giants will feed on. It's not uncommon to find a 100-pound tuna inside the belly of a marlin.

"The rule of thumb out here is basically whatever a fish can fit in its mouth," said Honolulu's Russell Tanaka, Magic's 44-year-old skipper.

Tanaka spent most of the day perched above the boat's cabin, pensively studying the open sea through his binoculars, looking for signs of fish. He is all business when in search mode — finding fish, after all, is his livelihood — but when the binoculars are down he can be quite jovial.

This day in late May found Tanaka surveying the water 50 miles off O'ahu's coast, nearly double the distance from shore he usually fishes. Why? Because that's where he felt the fish would be.

"This has a lot to do with the sixth sense," Tanaka said. "You've got to make the fish bite."

And for Tanaka, the fish bite often — and hard. He is the only angler in Hawai'i's history to have boated three 1,000-pound marlins. That's right, 1,000 pounds ... each.

Tanaka's three "granders" weighed in at 1,032 pounds, 1,106 pounds and 1,174 pounds. The latter would been even larger, but a shark took a giant bite out of its side on the way to the boat.

Inside the Magic, Tanaka has photo albums filled with images of those fish, and others. They are huge, otherworldly creatures that dwarf the humans standing beside them. The fish look almost unreal, like something you would expect to see on the cover of the Weekly World News: "Giant fish eats grandma: Grandpa to have monster mounted!"

The largest marlin ever boated by rod and reel was a 1,805-pounder, also caught off O'ahu.

"There's got to be a fish of 2,000 pounds out here somewhere," Tanaka said eagerly. "When you fish here in Hawai'i, you have a chance of catching the biggest blue marlin ever caught any place in the world. That's what keeps you going.

"You never know what's going to happen out here."

The island of O'ahu slowly faded from sight as Tanaka guided the Magic farther and farther out. Soon the view was all water and sky.

•	IF YOU GO Location: Honolulu's Kewalo Basin. Cost: $150 per person for full day share trip, $817 for full day private group (maximum six people). Contact: boat, 596-2998; booking agent, toll-free (877) 388-1376 or sportfish@hawaii.rr.com. Internet: www.sportfishhawaii.com

The ocean was unusually calm this day — a sheer sheet of glass spreading out to the horizon — and it was tempting to step off the boat and try to walk on over to the clouds.

"You don't find water like this very often off of this island," said Tanaka's assistant, 25-year-old Eric Nourrie of Honolulu. "You really lucked out today."

The calm was first interrupted at 8:58 a.m., roughly 2 1/2 hours after we left Kewalo Basin. And by luck of the draw, I was the first to occupy the throne. I reeled in a four-foot, 30-pound female mahi-mahi.

The initial bite ignites a flurry of activity in the boat. Tanaka and Nourrie hurriedly remove all other lines and lures from the water, and place the bitten rod and reel before the angler, who by this time has already raced into the chair. For everyone else, it's easy to feel like you're in the way.

Once the fish is brought to the boat, Tanaka and Nourrie "subdue" it with sharp hooks and aluminum baseball bats.

Only in certain special situations is catch-and-release an option. The boat and crew make most of their money from the sale of fish. Charter fees barely cover the costs of maintaining the vessel.

My mahi-mahi was the largest fish I have ever caught. For the charter's other anglers that boated fish, the trend continued.

Fifteen minutes after my catch, Garry Orender, of Cherry Valley, Calif., wrestled in our only marlin, a 20-pound short-billed spearfish — the rarest species of marlin in the world.

"That's what I came to catch, and I did it," said Orender, 48. "It's the biggest rush I've ever had. Boy, a big one would have been really tough. I think my arm would have fallen off."

Hickman was next, 90 minutes later. Then 27-year-old Atlanta resident Brian Dominguez got his turn 30 minutes after that. His catch was another ahi, this time a 100-pounder.

We caught all of our fish before noon, and started heading back to shore before 1 p.m.

"We're going to have a heck of a ride home," Tanaka warned. "We're about five hours from shore."

You know, five hours goes by pretty quickly in Hawai'i. Especially when it's just you, the porpoises and the sea.

Dan Washburn is an adventure columnist for The Times in Gainesville, Ga. E-mail him at dwashburn@gainesvilletimes.com.