The call was made the night before. I was still nursing a back injury and it has been flaring up something mean the past week. I wasn't too sure about going but I just had to give a try. Well I was up at 0dark30 to meet up at Pokai Bay beach park for a Westside paddle at 0600. Evan and Dave were already there. Me, Stan and Mike filed in shortly after one another. We all noticed Evan had set up pretty quick and was ready to go while we were still groggy and unloading our gears from the trucks. Something we all agree on is that we need a better system of gearing up at the launch site, we take too damn long.
We decide to partner up, so I buddied along with Dave. Stan and Mike stuck together and Evan, well he was already on the water. That guy can paddle, he was halfway to Makaha by the time me and Dave hit the water. Out past the point and headed straight out, we hit deep water within a hundred yards. Another klick and my sonar bottomed out, my FF only goes to 600, so I asked Dave and he mentioned over 900ft. We were both dragging some good baits so we agreed to troll for awhile towards Makaha.
It was a beautiful day. The water was calm, just a slight breeze coming down from the ridge and even though it was still around 7am, the morning sun was already starting to heat everything up. The view from the water towards Waianae was incredible, so peaceful.
And then there was the splash. Dave called out from 50yards to my right.
"Did you see that?"
"I think it was a shark!"
I replied, "I saw something." But I wasn't sure what it was.
We paddled a few more strokes and then I saw the biggest damn shark I've ever seen. Dave's kayak is about 15 feet long and from tip to tail the shark that was just under his kayak was about as long. The dorsal was in line with Daves stern so that mean it's head was just below Dave's seat. I suggested I paddle up closer to make us look like a bigger "target" and it seemed to work. The shark must have dove down deep. The next thing we heard was the ratchet from Dave's reel going off hard. The pole was bent double and that thing was taking off. Dave fought it for just a few moments and then bit off it's meal. He was just happy to get most of his line back.
That certainly made for an exciting start. The rest of the day wasn't too exciting for me. Trolled here, bottom fished there, but only ended up with a few Hagi (Triggerfish) which don't equal to any points. The other guys did catch some fish on their damashi rigs. Moana and weke were the usual suspects, but nothing big hit the big baits. That is until Mike and Stan were on their way in.
During the troll in, Mike got a hit and fought up a decent size Kaku (Heller's Barracuda). There was some joking around when he told the story after we were all on shore. Apparently, when he was trying to dispatch the fish on deck he was giving the sucker "love taps" (according to Stan) instead of giving it the beat down.
It was a fun run with a great group of guys. It wasn't a total skunk of a day but we know we'll bring in the bigger ones sooner than later.
Score for Day2
0
0
Mahalo to Dave and Mike for the images
No comments:
Post a Comment