Fishing for Giant Bonefish in Hawaii: My New Article in Saltwater Sportsman Magazine

Bonefish in Hawaii get HUGE! I went to Oahu last summer to get photos and content for a how-to/travel article that I wrote for Saltwater Sportsman on these prized fish. I spent a week with Capt. Mike Hennessy watching him put his clients of these monsters, which can grow to 16-plus pounds.  Here are some underwater bonefish photos and pictures.

Fishing with Kids- BIG fun on the High Seas!

I recently had the pleasure of taking three of my students fishing. Spending time on the water together and sharing my passion for saltwater angling, adventure, photography, and technology has proven to be a great way to get to know my students. Every year I try to get as many kids as I can out on the water.

This year, the mission is the same, but the number of students has increased twofold; my 4/5 combination class has 38 students(!) It's definitely the most challenging and rewarding assignment I've had in my 13 years teaching.
I don't have a boat, so I need people to help me. My buddy Mike Proctor owns one, and he has been my salvation many times over.
Here's Captain Mike:

The way I met him shows what kind of a guy he is. I used to teach at a public school on Camp Pendleton Marine Base, and one of the students in my class was upset because his dad was deploying for Iraq in three days. I put out a desperate "Hail Mary" post on a local fishing chat board, asking if anyone could volunteer to take the kid and his dad out fishing within the next two days, and Mike, who I had never met before, sends me an email telling me he's up for doing it!
Lo and behold two days later Mike took out my student, his dad, and the other two brothers, and they had an awesome time fishing, all on Mike's time and tab. So that's Mike. Here's a pic of the boys and their dad on that trip just a day before dad deployed:

I ended up teaching all three of those boys, in fact. The one that was in my class at the time, Luke, is the one with the chips in his mouth. Here is a picture of him the next day in class telling the kids about the monster fish he caught the day before with Captain Mike!

 (You'll have to excuse the quality, I took it on an old cell phone)

I gave Mike a call this past August; we'd been planning to take some of my kids out, and we finally found a weekend that worked for both of us. Of course I left it to the last minute, so on Thursday I announced in class that I had the chance to take three kids fishing. How would we make it fair? We decided to use a  random number generator that we looked up online.

Trouble was, most of the kids that got picked by the generator ended up not being able to go. Much of that may have been due to the fact that I called the kids' parents up and asked them if they could come on a fishing trip with me with no advance notice. It also didn't help that I was speaking in flawed Spanish to many of the parents, trying to bridge the language gap .

By the end of the day I had three kids who might be able to go, and to seal the deal with two, I needed to bring in a closer who was fluent in Spanish....my wife! It has to be an odd kind of situation, the parents not knowing me very well, and me being new to this school. I don't imagine they get a lot of calls from gringo teachers asking if they can take their kids out fishing on a boat for free, but after they spoke with my wife and I, they agreed to it. I felt honored. The other student, whose parents speak English, wasn't an easy sell either, but after I explained how safe it was going to be, the parents agreed.

Half of the fun was watching the kids interact. Bill, Eve, and Richy aren't exactly chums in class, but they were the right kids to bring, because they hadn't experienced the wonders of the sea. Bill in particular is a very quiet kid at school.

By the time we'd gotten halfway to Dana Point Harbor (which is all of 30 miles away), the kids were giggling excitedly and acting as if they'd been best buds for years. Bill, as you can see in comparing the pics from above and below, had turned over a new leaf and became the life of the party.

The hills to the left, shrouded in early morning mist, somehow morphed into prehistoric mountains in their minds. I had to remind them periodically where we were, and that no, those hills weren't volcanoes, and that yes, we were still in the United States.

We stopped at a tackle shop to check the scene out. Mind you, we didn't need anything (Mike would provide it all) but I thought it would be a good idea to set the stage by letting them see some reels, rods, and fish mounts: tools of the trade, and reminders that were venturing into Poseidon's domain, where we'd summon equal amounts of brawn and brains in epic battles between man and monster. Or kids and fish.

If you take the time to prime the pump by stoking the kids imagination and schooling them on what they are likely to encounter, that makes the trip more meaningful; by the time we showed up at the dock to meet our benefactor Mike and his magnificent motorboat full of gear and grub, the kids were fired up!

Mike fitted the kids with life jackets and I started passing out cameras and food.                          

We motored out to a buoy where a single male sea lion held court with a bevy of ladies, and stayed until the stench eclipsed our curiosity.

After another ten minute cruise, Mike set anchor just outside the kelp and set out some chum to attract schools of mackerel. The thing about fishing with kids is that they usually prefer action over size. Whereas some anglers are happy to scour the ocean for a chance at hooking into one huge fish, most kids prefer to stay closer to shore, pulling on smaller fish all day. Having done both I'm not sure they haven't picked the better option!

I began to explain what it was like under the kelp forest that we were anchored next to. Because the trip was scheduled on such short notice, I hadn't had time to teach them enough about the marine environment.  I decided to put the latest technology to use and bring up images of kelp forests on my iPhone! Is that cool or what? We were doing internet research in real time on the boat! Kelp is pretty unimpressive when you are on top of the water surface, but once the kids learned what it's like below, their excitement doubled. As a teacher, I felt thrilled to be able to use technology in such a meaningful way.
I actually returned to the exact same spot two weeks later to do a shoot for a fishing magazine and I got some cool underwater kelp forest pictures. That's me mired in the kelp in the first pic.

                        

So there we were in the boat looking at pics of the kelp on my iPhone. Soon Captain Mike set up some chum (ground up fish parts) along the side of the boat to attract our "target species", the mighty mackerel. These are great fun on light tackle because it's one after the other fishing, and they school right next to the boat, so it's very visual. Within minutes the kids had mastered the art of hooking these hard fighting brutes, and chaotic contests of fury and might commenced.                        

Something primeval was born in Bill at that moment; the warrior within him surfaced. I was no longer watching a child at play; I was witnessing an archetypal struggle between man and beast. Soon he had fought his foe to the corner of the boat, gaining line at times, only to watch it fly off the reel in bursts.

Ultimately, Bill's superior intellect enabled him to subdue the sea creature, and he hoisted his vanquished foe aboard in a bold display of strength and supremacy.

Like many of the world's strongest gamefish, mackerel exhibit a fishy taste, so we decided to put them in Captain Mike's bait tank. Soon their catches numbered many. The kids enjoyed watching them circle 'round the pen; it allowed them to savor their victory, while still permitting their later release.

Eve and Richy boated some of the largest specimens.

We also took advantage of another learning opportunity by examining Captain Mike's 'fish finder".   California State Math Standard Number Sense 1.2 requires that the students "Order and compare whole numbers and decimals" and we talked about how we might round 41.9 feet of depth to 42 feet, thereby doubling our chances of catching "the big one". With stakes this high, we couldn't get bogged down in whether or not we had 41 or 42 feet beneath us!

                                        

To finish off our successful sea voyage, Captain Mike brought the kids to Seal Rock and broke out the last of the booty for the kids. I'm not a big fan of junk food but rights of passage like these call for celebrations of decadence and debauchery. They earned their stripes.

The trip provided a great many opportunities for excitement and learning, and the next day in class I had the students cap off their adventure with some writing and art activities. These would provide a forum for higher order thinking skills like evaluation and synthesis that are mentioned in Bloom's Taxonomy. Here's a sample of the work:

The highlight of the trip for me was watching the kids on the ride home. The kids asked Mike to push the boat to it's limits and Mike granted their wish. Richy kept falling off of the chair and together we all broke out in laughter, to the point where our bellies ached. 

Perhaps Eve summed up the trip best in this last part of her letter to our dear friend Captain Mike:

To see more stories about Jon fishing with kids click here and here. Also, believe it or not one time I was able to arrange a free fishing trip for a family of a returning Iraq War Vet. His son was my student and you can read about that trip here.

Strange Fishing News: Weird Disc-Shaped Opah Fish Washes Up on San Diego Beach!

Jon Schwartz of http://www.bluewaterjon.com/ with some incredible fishing news: a large, strange looking Opah fish washed ashore in San Diego, in perfect shape! These bizarre brightly colored sea creatures are only rarely found by recreational anglers in this region, let alone in the surf; they're usually caught by longliners in distant waters, or incidentally by anglers fishing great depths. With the strange water conditions and cooler water temps brought about by La Niña this year, some commercial boats have been netting them at night miles off the Southern California Coast.  But why was it here in such shallow waters? Moreover, how did it get to shore untouched by the sharks, sealions, and other predators that exist here? Opah are delicious and go for over 12 dollars a pound!

Surfer Scott Williams was on a cliff overlooking his favorite surf spot at 9:00 am Friday 9/24/10 when he and his friends spotted a manhole-sized red object floating in the water 50 yards offshore. They took out a pair of binoculars to get a closer view. Whatever it was, it may have been moving slightly. According to Williams, a 50 year old surfer who has surfed the area for 41 years, "Once we realized it was a fish, we ran down there as fast as we could!"

Scott is a veteran waterman, and surfs internationally. In the four decades he'd spent surfing this same spot, he'd never seen anything of that shape, color, and size. Soon the large disc-shaped object had washed up on shore. Scott took pictures of it on his cellphone.

A crowd gathered around the unique animal; some suggested they might try putting it back in hopes that it would swim off, but it became obvious that the fish was now either dead, or on it's last gasp. As you can see from the photos, their unusual shape wouldn't help them move much on land. "It was a beautiful fish, and looked very healthy. We were in awe because in all the time I have spent there, I usually only see dead seagulls or pelicans washing up. Once in a while a small decomposed fish washes ashore, but this was huge, bright red and silvery with white spots. It looked like it was from another planet!"

Indeed, of all the fish in the ocean, the Opah, also known as Moonfish, are one of the wildest looking. I first saw a mount of one at Rancho Leonero Fishing Lodge in Baja Mexico, and ever since then I have been fascinated by them. They are not the type of fish that you target casually and no one I know has ever fished for them on purpose. The only non-commercial angler I personally know who has ever caught one is Captain Dale Leverone who skippers a popular charter operation called the Sea Strike in Kona, Hawaii.  Here is Dale below with a 138 pounder. We know this was exactly 138 pounds because it was weighed on a certified scale at the Kona Charter Desk.

Judging by that picture of Dale, knowing his size, and comparing that to the photos of the beached Opah, I'd say the San Diego specimen is at least 80 pounds. In fact it could well be over 100. Dale happens to be one of the foremost experts in fishing at great depths for unusual fish. The Kona Coast of Hawaii where he lives is the perfect place to fish the abyssal depths, because it gets incredibly deep very close to shore. It was during one of his "deep dropping" jaunts, when he dropped a whole squid down to 1200 feet, that he landed his Opah, a catch so rare that it made the cover of Hawaii Fishing News.
I actually spent time accompanying Leverone this summer in Kona on the Sea Strike, and had a great time swapping strange fish stories. I sat listening most of the time as we motored along the Kona Coast because Leverone is an expert and I am merely an enthusiast. We made plans to hook up later this year and see if we can't fish for some other deep water oddities.
To me, this Opah incident is particularly ironic, because about 5 years ago when I was obsessed with kayak fishing, I made an action adventure DVD about catching big fish from kayaks, called "Bluewater Jon and the Giant Tuna".

The 57 minute long movie starts with an animation sequence I painstakingly constructed that features, of all things, a dancing Opah!! I picked it because it looked hilarious to me, that an animal could actually live and be shaped and colored like that. One would think it would be an easy target, and forget about camouflage; I don't care how deep you go, pink with opalescent white spots can't blend in anywhere, right? To see an except from that Opah animation sequence and more exciting kayak fishing videos, click here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GgH1hvH3uZ8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZyS4K4J-7N8&feature=related
http://www.bluewaterjon.com/video.htm

Back to the "Opah Incident": As you can see, this isn't as if any old sea creature landed on a beach 5 miles from my own house- I've long had a fascination with these marvelous fish. I've spent the last several years photographing large fish like sharks, marlin, sailfish and tuna above and below the water (see my galleries at : http://www.bluewaterjon.com/photogallery.htm) but one of my biggest fantasies is to come face to face with one of these amazing Opah.  I don't suppose it would jump out of the water next to me like the sailfish below but I'd be so excited I wouldn't much care.

The only time I have ever seen an Opah is in fillet form at the seafood market; they are delicious! Had Scott Williams known this, he may have thought twice about leaving the large, seemingly healthy fish in the sand. "We thought it might have been a sunfish, and then someone said that sunfish are poor eating, so we just left it there."  Then again, who knows why the fish ended up so, uh, washed up? ( For my 4th and 5th grade students reading this, that's called a pun!) Eating fish you find on the beach is probably not the smartest way to cop a free meal.
I found out about the Opah Incident when I saw Scott at a friend's party on Friday night. He came up to me and said, "Jon, you know your fish pretty well, what is this?" My eyes bugged as soon as he showed me the pics on his cell phone. "Omigosh! It's an Opah!" There must have been a lot of surfers at this party because another one of our friends overheard us and showed us photos he took of the same fish in the sand later in the day. By that time the fish's beautiful colors had faded. I'll try to get those photos too. Word has it that someone carted the specimen away; I hope it went to a scientist who can make sense of the "Opah Incident"!

I'll try to follow up this interesting story with interviews of some marine biologists I know who might be able to make some sense of this all.
Stay Tuned,
Jon Schwartz
Fishing News, Travel Articles, and Photography

http://www.bluewaterjon.com/

Amazing Fishing Photos

Fishing photography has become something of an obsession for me. I used to spend a lot of time trying to catch fish on hook and line, usally from kayaks, but now it's all about capturing their glory on camera! Above you see me taking a photo of a jumping sailfish in Guatemala. They are known for their spectacular leaps and I thought getting up close and personal might provide me with a good vantage point. Below is a female mahi mahi, or dorado. Not the most cooperative species for photos!

Below here we have the magnificent blue marlin, close quarters! I strove to get a head on photograph. I had to head it off at the pass to do so, and then we both veered off at the last moment...

I'll post some more goodies later today: I have to get ready for my first day of teaching school this year. I teach elementary school in Oceanside, CA. If you haven't read the account of how the press boat that I was on in Hawaii hooked into two giant marlin, check out the story here:

700 pound giant marlin tagged by press boat!

Press Boat rammed by 550 pound marlin tags a 700 pound giant two days later!

This is Jon Schwartz here from www.bluewaterjon.com. By now you know the story of how our little press boat was rammed by a 550 pound blue marlin on day 2 of the Hawaiian International Billfish Tournament (HIBT). Incredibly, the story was on the front page of Yahoo for two straight days. Talk about being in the right place at the right time!
In fact, that wild episode turned out to be only the first chapter of a crazy week in Kona. Two days later, our press boat hooked, fought, tagged, and released an even BIGGER fish, providing for a terrifically ironic twist to the prestigious tournament. 

On this 4th day, myself, mate KJ Robinson, and Capt. B.C. Crawford were joined Kona photographer Charla Thompson.  As you will see later, we were lucky to have her aboard. I greeted the guys with a hug upon boarding the boat; through our wild experience the other day, we'd grown to be fast friends overnight. We remarked on how lucky we'd been to see that marlin going wild, and I was happy as a clam to have gotten some photos that were gaining some attention in the news. (Funny thing is, I haven't even shown many people the best ones!).

Charla and I climbed up into the bridge as we left the famous Kailua Pier so we could get some shots of the boats as they streamed out to find the fish.

While Charla is an accomplished Kona portrait, event, scenic, and wedding photographer, she doesn't spend a lot of time on fishing boats. She was looking forward to an exciting day, but was also aware that the odds of us witnessing anything truly spectacular were not high. Fishing photographers like me sometimes spend weeks on boats without getting a single good shot; magic can happen at any time, or only once in a great while. I've spent entire trips in big game fishing hotspots and come away with nothing. 

Now, you may have surmised that we were a naughty little press boat. Press boats have one job: to wait until other boats are hooked up, and then jet over to them in hopes of getting shots of them with their fish jumping near the boat. Press boats ain't supposed to troll lures! But this being 'The Land of the Giants', many HIBT press boat captains and their mates find it impossible to resist deploying one or two lures, just in case...

For this reason, I wasn't surprised when KJ started deploying lures, again. As you can see in the above photo he did it with a grin while talking on his cell, the mischievous fellow! Then again, what harm could come of it? I sure didn't speak up in opposition, especially after our incredible episode two days prior, and I figured that the odds were against us hooking anything again. 

So we're trolling lures, the sun is out, and the water is incredibly calm with just a slight breeze; just the conditions that make Kona such an appealing fishing location (BIG fish, calm waters). Less than an hour into our day, one of our reels starts screaming again, and guess what? A giant marlin starts jumping behind our boat!! Can this really be happening?!!

As you may recall, the marlin that rammed our press boat two days earlier had been estimated to be 550, or even 600 pounds. (In fact, B.C had called it 550, and renowned angler and Director of the famous Lizard Island Black Marlin Tournament, Bob Lowe, who witnessed the entire spectacle, estimated it at 600!) Now B.C. is calling the one we have on 700 pounds!!!
It took some fantastic leaps, and thankfully, didn't charge the boat like the one we had one two days earlier. (And to be fair to that fish that "attacked" our boat two days earlier, it wasn't an unprovoked attack, it was doing what it felt it needed to do to get away. Had it only known that we planned to tag and release it..... but I'll revisit this interesting issue in a later blog post and include exciting accounts and video interviews taken from several experienced eyewitnesses).
Now back to the present fish! Of course, we have no anglers aboard; Charla has little fishing experience and although I do, I'm hesitant to put my cameras down, so once again, mate KJ hops into the chair and starts battling the fish. To his credit, the only help I gave him was the occasional sip of water and a turn of his fighting chair.

As if the irony of our little press boat being hooked up to the biggest fish of the tournament wasn't enough to blow minds, I get a call at this very moment from Peter Fithian, the venerable and esteemed founder of the HIBT. I thought he might have heard that we were hooked up again and was going to tell us to quit being such rascals, but he hadn't yet heard the news; he was calling for another reason.

"Hi Jon, this is Peter... I wonder if you wouldn't mind speaking with a reporter from a TV station in Honolulu about your encounter with the marlin the other day?"

"Peter, I'd love to, but there's a big fish on right now and I can't talk now!" I yelled into the phone.

"Who's hooked up, Jon?"

"WE ARE, PETER! GOTTA GO! TALK SOON!!!"

Back out to the deck I ran, trying to see if the huge fish would jump again and provide Charla and I with some more photo ops. KJ kept fighting the fish with great strength and vigor, applying as much drag as his 80 pound tackle would let him. The line grew so taught that it made whistling sounds as the air blew over it, and it cut zigzags through the water, making an incredible pattern on the surface that portrayed the tension of the moment. I tried to capture it on my camera:

                            

This was a truly incredible fish with immense power reserves, and every time KJ would get it up to the boat, it would light up in glowing shades of silver, teal, and blue and take off on another run. It became clear that KJ and B.C. wanted to be able to claim the fish as an official catch and release for the boat; big fish caught on boats are basically their resumes. But before they could claim it as an offical boat catch and release, a tag would have to be inserted into the fish, hence the term tag and release.

                            

These tags contain data on them which is then recorded once the fish is tagged, and then an official tagging report is sent to an organization that keeps track of these things. If the fish is caught again, they can use the information on the tag to assess things like how far the fish has traveled and how much it has grown, all information that can aid in protecting and maintaining healthy stocks of billfish worldwide. (For more information, see The Billfish Foundation's website at www.billfish.org. TBF is a non-profit organization dedicated solely to conserving and enhancing billfish populations through the world).

We were now faced with a dilemna: who would tag the fish? I'd come all the way out here to get pictures of fish, so I was not eager to put my cameras down and miss the shot of this fish jumping out of the water at boatside, but at the same time, no one else could do it.  Eventually I put my camera down, joined the team, and talked strategy with KJ and BC. We agreed that once KJ took a wrap on the leader, I'd follow behind him and insert the tag. Although I'd caught small marlin from kayaks and released them, I'd never bothered to tag them, so this would have to be a first for me! You can bet my adrenalin was pumping; I wasn't so much afraid of the giant fish as I was about screwing things up for KJ and BC!

After one hour and ten minutes of fighting the fish, KJ made put the rod in the holder and grabbed the leader, but the fish still had way too much energy and wasn't ready to be leadered. It's tail lit up everytime it got close to the boat and it shook it's massive body like a giant bull. This was one huge animal! In the above picture that Charla took, you can see KJ struggling with the mighty fish at the stern. Finally he led the fish to the port side of the boat and took several wraps with his gloved hands. I followed right behind him, determined not to let the guys down and ruin their chance at glory. The moment of truth had arrived!

"Tag the fish! Tag it!" screamed KJ. I leaned over the rail with the tagging stick and readied myself, but to my inexperienced eyes, it seemed that the fish wasn't close enough for me to implant the tag. I'd seen some trained mates blow it and either miss or send the fish flailing away from the boat. I sure didn't want to botch the job, annoy the fish, and send it racing away from the boat in another desperate lunge; that might put KJ in a bad spot!

"But shouldn't I put it just below the dorsal fin in the shoulder? What if I put it in the wrong spot?"

KJ was insistent:

"JUST DO IT!"

Now I really felt the pressure! Realizing that I'd be better off screwing up by following his directions than hesitating and messing things up on my own, I committed myself to the act, leaned over once again, and followed through, sticking the tag solidly into the fish. The below picture gives a good feeling for just how big that marlin really was!  Not a 100% perfect spot for the insertion of the tag but considering the circumstances I think it worked out OK. At least it was close to the dorsal fin!

Thank gosh Charla was there to get the photos because I don't think anyone would believe that we actually pulled it off. Of course, I did almost nothing; KJ perfectly executed the job of both the angler and mate, and BC did a great job of positioning the boat. When the 550 pounder rammed our boat two days earlier, there were many experienced witnesses, including Captain Kevin Nakamaru and angler and respected Australian tournament director Bob Lowe, but this time we were all alone, and showing back up at the Kailua Pier with an a tale about an even bigger fish was definitely going to arouse some skepticism. But as you can see from the photos, as fantastic as the story is, it's all true: the little press boat was the luckiest boat on the whole Island of Hawaii! All hail Captain B.C. Crawford of the mighty Chiripa and his mate KJ Robinson! 

Note: Be sure to check back soon at my blog Jon Schwartz's Fishing and Travel Blog for the great stories I have to share about what happened after the HIBT ended! Think sharks, big ahi tuna, and two marlin underwater at the same time, with one of them free swimming!! If you have any free time, also check out my site www.bluewaterjon.com for more cool fishing and travel stories and photographs.