Maui no ka oi

[Fish Buster]

Here are some mahi that gave up the ghost on our last two fishing trips

The one bull is 45 lbs.

I have to give kudos to Jim Rizzuto for all the techniques he has compiled over the years in his books fishing Hawaii Style. The information is solid and it gave me the foundation to build upon.

The big bull smashed a 1 pound aku that was bridled and sent out long.

The funny thing is we caught three nice mahi and a couple nice shibi while there was six other boats around who caught nothing. Three of these boats were charters. Of the six, five were live baiting with akule or opelu.

Sometimes the only way to catch em is to feed em what they are hunting for.

[jagerhunchback]

NICE!!!! usually i'm one of the other 6 boats, not the one filling the boat with fish. thanks for the post

[Bada Bing]

Very nice grade of flats, one of my favorite fishes to catch. Thanks for sharing.

[chumfromwithin]

this may be a dumb question but here goes...what does 'no ka oi' mean? thanks

[jagerhunchback]

"DA BESSSTTT!!!!!!!"

[Carlito]

No Kai Oi.

Tha one and Only!

[Fish Buster]

You know it!!!

How has everyone else been doing out there?

Weve been having small stripers, and small blues getting caught and a few small size tunas but outside of that it has been shitty.

Luckily, (and a bit of skill) we have been knocking out the toad mahis almost everytime we go out.

The killer season is upon us and we should all see fish pops building over the next two months.....cant wait, im stoked!

Also,
does anyone have any input on using downriggers for monster ahi?
What brand of downrigger do you recommend?

i want to downrig live bait around the FADS when the big boys show up.

[jagerhunchback]

Trolling Techniques

z-wing, cheaper then a downrigger and you don't have to bring it in everytime you catch a fish.

should look something like this, i use snap swivels instead of shower curtain rings to lock the rubber bands in.

[Fred Archer]

Nice mahi's! And downstairs is often a great way to catch them.

Many, many times we caught bunches of them down in Cabo after weeks of nobody seeing them on the surface. We caught them on downriggers and planers under areas where the striped marlin were finning and sleeping and refusing live fin baits up top, a pretty common situation down there when either squid or the pelagic red crabs were in town, but down. Our initial target was the stripers and we clobbered them, but the shocker was how many mahi were down there with them. The difference between the fish was that the marlin had to come up into the warm surface water and sun to digest their food (which was the reason why they come up, but rarely bite at those times), but the mahi's obviously don't. And the ahi don't either. We caught lots of them too.

We started out with live fin bait, but since that wasn't what the fish were eating, we didn't do so hot. But as soon as we switched over to Spider dredges, just as you might imagine, we just murdered them all.

Put what they're eating down on the dinner table, where they are eating it, and hang on! Try it - you'll like it!

Here are some Spiders and Spider fish. The first one is good when the regular size squid are on the menu and that little one right after it is just killer on the red crab or very small squid fish.

Sorry if this is taken as spam, but the truth is, if you don't see it here, you won't see it.

[chuck merkel]

I use a Cannon manual down rigger on my boat. I believe that the model is a unitroll 5 or 10. I use a 10-12# weight. I replaced the steel cable that came with the down rigger with 200# spectra. I mount the down rigger on a rod holder mount so it is easy to get out of the way once hooked up. I recommend that you connect a safety lanyard on your down rigger - ask me why I know this. I would also not recommend using the plastic rod holder that most down riggers come with - I did not have a bad experience to learn this, but a friend of mine did. Fortunately he had a safety lanyard on his rod. I use it along the ledge and around the buoys with live bait -akule, opelu and aku. I have had good success catching kaku, ulua, kahala, dog tooth tuna, uku, ono, mahi mahi and shibis. I have also hooked sharks. Along the ledge I typically use a short (1 foot) sevenstrand wire leader - short enough that if a shark gets hooked it can cut my mainline. Around the buoys I sometimes use a 100# flourocarbon leader, but sometimes no leader at all. I hope this helps.