Going from west to east with naming the islands we have
Kauai and
Niihau. Moving eastward we have
Oahu, then
Moloka'i, Lanaii,
Kaholawe,
Molokini Crater,
Maui and the big island of
Hawaii.
Niihau & Kaukai
Niihau doesn't really have too many inhabitants and from my understanding is you have to be invited on the island to even get to that island. Kauai is the oldest of all the Hawaiian islands, a lot of erosion has taken place there and the mountains are a little bit more straight up and down and more water flow, more precipitation, that water around the island can get a little bit dirty, because of the runoff that you get from all the precipitation, the rivers flowing out into the ocean. It's also a place where sharks roam around. When fresh water rivers are emptying out into the ocean, they're looking and scavenging and searching out any kind of opportunities that they might be able to find some food.
Oahu
Then we have Oahu and Oahu has the famous north shore, where you have great surfing. Also there's a lot of precipitation on that northern end of Oahu and the south end of Oahu is where Honolulu is located or Waikiki and that is a more inhabited place. Oahu has the most out of the population out of any other island in the whole state of Hawaii.
Molokai & Lanai
And then moving eastward, we have Molokai, not too many people live on Molokai and you kind of got to be careful if you take a boat over there and go spearfishing or fishing over there, you got to be careful that you're not stepping on any toes or that you're not going to be chased out of there or coming to any confrontation with locals. Same thing on Lanai. That island is not very populated, it's a little bit more dry of an island and they do still receive some precipitation and when that island does rain there's a lot of mud, it's almost like a clay that you would find in the state of Georgia or South Carolina and that mixes in with the ocean water and sometimes it gets a little bit murky.
Kahoolawe & Molokini Crater
Then we also have Kahoolawe, which you've probably and most people have probably never heard of that island. It was used as a test bombing island for the US military and the allied forces all the way from World War II up until the early 90s in desert storm and nobody's actually allowed within two nautical miles of that island. If you have a fishing permit, every other weekend they will open it up and, you can get in, with 180 foot depth and your vessel has to be creating a wake. So the only type of fishing that you can really do there, every other weekend, is trolling. Then we have Molokini Crater and that is a cinder cone that comes out of the ocean in between the islands of Kahoolawe and Maui.
Maui
And moving eastward we have the beautiful island of Maui where i live and this island has the third largest mountain in the entire world. The summit reaching up to ten thousand feet and most of the mountain or the volcano which is dormant and not extinct actually lies beneath the ocean's surface and then on the northwest side of the island we have the west Maui mountains. Maui is called the valley island, because there is a big valley in between the Maui mountains and Haleakala, the volcano and the wind gets magnified through this mountain range into this valley and the wind is very volatile, you have to be very careful, Maui is an extremely windy island and all it takes is for the wind to shift a couple degrees here or there and you can find yourself in a bad situation.
Hawaii
Then eastward, moving southeast, we have the big island of Hawaii. And the big island is one of the
sport fishing capitals of the entire world. That island has the first and largest mountains in the world, those being
Mauna Kea and
Mauna Loa. Both of the summits of those volcanoes sit at about 13000 feet and most of those volcanoes actually lie beneath the ocean surface. That island is the youngest out of all the Hawaiian islands and it's actually still growing as we speak. The big island gets deep really quick and you can get pelagic fish, you can shoot a world record blue marlin from on a shore dive, you can shoot wahoo or ono from shore, it's a very unique place in the world and there's a lot of trophy fish and world records landed on that island.
Weather, Wind, Current
Typically Hawaii is dominated by a trade wind that comes out of the northeast, the east or even the southeast trade wind. The windward side of these islands, being the east side of the islands, typically receive more precipitation, more rainfall than the leeward or the westward side of the islands. And the westward side of the islands is a little bit more of like a desert climate, it's dry, so the east side of the islands with this rain, you have more runoff, sometimes the water is going to be cloudy, so you got to really know when the rain is falling on the east side of the island. You don't want to be going to dive in murky water, like i said, that's where some of the sharks will hang out, looking for food and any opportunity of any animals or anything like that that might be running out into the ocean. At these river mouths you're going to have more of like smooth rocks on the bottom of the ocean, almost like smooth cobblestones, with coral growing on those. As you move to the leeward side of the island, a lot of that is going to be dry lava with not too much vegetation on it. The lava flows down into the ocean and it's a little bit more jagged, a little bit more rugged and you have coral reef growing on that as well.
The current plays a big factor in going out and spearfishing in the Hawaiian islands. We have some deep water channels between each island and large amounts of water is squeezed between tight places here in between the islands and it gets magnified and it can do some pretty incredible things. You can have whirlpools, waves stand up pretty high and it could be a very volatile place to be in the ocean. So knowing what the current's doing is very very important. The current is largely affected by the phases of the moon, so knowing the moon is great not only with the current, but also knowing the phases of the moon to know where the fish are going to be, what times of the day and what times of the night that they're hunting as well.
Moving from the current we're going to go on to the
wind. As i said Hawaii is predominantly faced with a northeast or east or even a southeast trade wind. Sometimes in the winter we have low pressure cold fronts that originate off of Alaska, Russia and Japan and they move their way eastward, over the Hawaiian islands and then eventually onto the continental US, North America and Central America, pushing from California to Florida and that's when you get the snow. We get it first here in Hawaii. Those cold fronts sometimes can make a
kona wind blow. A kona wind is a south to a southwest directed wind and usually that'll happen before a cold front in the winter time. Then after a cold front we'll have a stiff northeast trade wind. And the summer time is usually just dominated by trade winds.
The
direction of the wind is an important factor and knowing where is going to be in the lee of the wind or where you're going to find shelter from the wind. As i said the big island has Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa, the two biggest mountains in the world and if you're in the lee of those mountains and the wind's blowing in the right direction, say as in Kona, you're going to have light winds pretty much almost every day of the year, unless you have a Kona wind blowing and that would make the wind on shore for that side of the island. But typically Kona is going to be nice light winds and it gets deep very quick there, so that's a really great place for pelagic hunting. Over here on Maui it's kind of the same effect but
Haleakala is a smaller mountain, a smaller volcano, so it's a little bit more volatile than Kona, it's not consistently as calm in the lee on this side of the island, on the west side of the island in the wind shadow.
You got to be really
in tune with what direction the wind is blowing in degrees. So if the wind's got a little bit of north in it, typically the wind's going to push through the west Maui mountains and the valley and between the west Maui mountains and Haleakala, and the wind line can come down and you see a line of white water out in the ocean, you better take cover because it can come in very quick and you can have a nice, slick, calm, oil, glass warning, turning into a five foot wind chop within a matter of two minutes. So you gotta keep your eye on the wind in Hawaii and the other islands as well. If you're on the west side of the island, you're in the lee most of the time. The east side of the islands are a little bit more exposed to the wind, so you've got to be on it.
Aquatic Life
The water is typically crystal clear, blue, beautiful, open ocean pacific water, with the temperature in the summertime ranging around 80 degrees fahrenheit and in the winter time and the late winter into the early spring, it can get down into the low 70s, i've seen it 70 degrees here before. The visibility is great, like i said, a lot of days we're having 150 foot of vis, even more so than that sometimes. And if you have a hundred foot of vis, that's a typical day that's not the greatest day ever, but that's pretty normal here in Hawaii.
We have some nice warm blue water for the most part and a three millimeter wetsuit is usually most suitable sometimes in the wintertime. If the water gets a little chilly and the air is a little chilly you might want to throw a five millimeter top on, but for the most part it's going to be nice warm blue water.
There's a lot of bonuses to spearfishing in Hawaii, we have a huge variety of aquatic life, ranging from pelagic manta rays, reef mantas, spotted eagle rays, we have all kinds of whales going from sperm whales, to humpback whales, to false killer whales. We have a lot of different types of dolphins, we have spinner dolphins, ragged tooth dolphins, bottlenose dolphins. We have a lot of awesome transocean birds such as gannets, eva, or otherwise known as frigates that you can experience while being out on the water here.
Eels
We have a thriving ecosystem, very healthy, a lot of live coral on the reef, so you got to be really weary of when you are diving down to the reef that you don't get stuck by any urchins, which we call vonna here. We have a lot of eels, different types of subspecies of moray eels, so you got to be careful that you don't get bit by an eel by sticking your hand into a rock trying to find a spiny lobster or laying on a coral reef you might you might land on an eel. When you are coming in for a landing on the reef, make sure that you try not to touch the reef, as much as possible, because it's very fragile and vulnerable and it takes a long time to grow back. But also you want to do that to to keep an eye out for anything that might be detrimental to you, like the urchins or the eels.
Whales
As i mentioned the island the island of Hawaii, the big island, or other islands like Kauai or Oahu the water gets deep really quick there, so there's a wide variety of open ocean fish and mammals that you can experience out on those islands. Whereas Maui here like i mentioned, it's a little bit more shallow, not getting past around 500 to 600 feet deep, so we have a great humpback whale sanctuary here, all the whales come here for mating and to give birth. So they're born and raised here in Maui and then they go up to Alaska to feed for six months, get their blubber layers really thick and prepare for their trip back down here to Hawaii where they don't eat. The only humpback whales that are eating here are the calves that are nursing off of their mother. We have the the largest concentration of humpback whales, in the northern hemisphere, in the pacific ocean. The winter months are really really great to experience humpback whales, you can hear them singing under the water, sometimes they get close enough to to rattle your chest and it's just a great experience, while you're out here spearfishing.
Sharks
We also have a wide variety of sharks, some are open ocean sharks more so, then we have trans ocean sharks and resident sharks as well that reside on the reefs. So some of the species of the sharks on the wreath that you're gonna find are sandbar sharks ,we'll have some hammer heads, a lot of tiger sharks and most of the tiger sharks that we have out here are quite large and inquisitive. We also have white tip reef sharks, there's galapagos sharks, gray reef sharks and then more so out in the open ocean we'll have silky sharks, oceanic white tips, sometimes we'll also get a great white and some of these great whites that we get out here are massive. We also have some whale sharks as well, there's quite a few whale sharks spotted out in the Hawaiian islands year round. So that's really a pleasure to be able to see all of this wildlife that we have here in these beautiful conditions, on the most isolated island chain in the world.
Fish To Hunt
We have a wide variety of species of fish that are preferred to be hunted out here and starting off on the reef, my favorites, i usually aim for three different types of fish, one being an uku which is a gray snapper or a green job fish. Those are delicious, they're awesome, it's a snapper and they are very difficult to hunt. They're very intelligent and it takes a lot of strategy and time to develop the techniques to get these fish to come in. You got to have good aim with your gun, you got to have your gear dialed in, to make sure that you're confident when you place a shot on an uku.
Also one of my favorite species to hunt is a yellow spot trevally. Any trevally under 10 pounds in Hawaii is referred to as a papio. A lot of times you'll hear people say yellow spot papio, most of the ones that i try to target are over 10 pounds and those would be referred to as a yellow spot trevally. Awesome fish, a little bit more oily and great sashimi, so is the uku. All the fish that i target are going to be sashimi grade fish, i'm super picky and i really like my sushi. So the yellow spot trevally is one, a blue fin trevally also referred to as an omilu in Hawaii is great, and a giant trevally, otherwise known as ulua is a targeted species. I've only shot one of those, i'm not really trevally ulua, sometimes i'll target the bluefin trevally, but about out of all the trevallys, the yellow spot trevally has the best table fare.
Also we have a big-eyed emperor fish which is referred to as a mu in Hawaii. Those fish are probably the most intelligent species that i've ever hunted. Their teeth actually are set back almost like humans to where they have canines up front and in the back they have molars and their main diet is going to be urchins, so they can crunch up the urchins with the teeth that they have. A lot of times when you shoot a mu and you harvest it, you'll see urchin spines all stuck in their lips, it's pretty incredible how these fish eat and how they live with all the urchins stuck in their lips.
Pelagic Fish
Now moving towards the pelagic realm, we have ono, otherwise known as wahoo around the world, we have yellowfin tuna, which if it's typically if it's under 100 pounds it's referred to as a shebe and anything over a hundred pounds is referred to as an ahi. We have yellowfin, we also have big eyed tuna and we also have skipjack, which is an aku, we have kava kava which is a bonita. The bonita are actually pretty good here, they're really really good sashimi and aku's good sashimi, a little bit more blood in that meat but still great table fare with those types of those types of fish. We have rainbow runner, referred to as kamanu, we have mahi mahi or otherwise referred to as dorado or dolphin fish in different parts of the world.
We also have fish from other parts of the world that you don't necessarily normally will see here like a hamachi or a yellowtail jack or they call them kingfish in places like New Zealand. So we have those sometimes as well but for the most part you're going to be looking in Hawaii for ono, ahi and mahi for pelagic fish. Also not limited to that we also have bill fish in the mix, so there's blue marlin, black marlin, striped marlin, we have sailfish, pacific sailfish, which gets really large and we have spear fish as well, we have swordfish but for the most part you're not going to want to spear a swordfish, those get kind of sketchy, even just catching on those on rod and reel. That pretty much covers the variety of species of fish and like i said, i like a lot of my fish we prepared raw in sushi rolls or sashimi.
Poke
A popular dish in Hawaii is poke, so you can find all different kinds of variations and recipes for poke. Poke balls deep fried is great, any kind of a fish deep fried is always awesome and any fish that i feel like you can eat as sashimi, i feel like it's best to cook it almost like a filet mignon or a tenderloin for beef. Cook it hot and fast on a skillet. I like to cook mine medium rare to medium and then as the days move forward you might want to get the fish a little bit more well done, but in the first few days i really suggest cooking the fish hot and fast. You could do it deep fried, you could cook it in butter, you can cook it in oil but hot and fast is really the name of the game as far as i'm concerned.
Spearfishing Gear & Techniques
Now i'm going to discuss some of the gear and equipment that we use and some of the strategies and techniques that are used for spearfishing within the hawaiian islands. Every island is unique in its own way, there's a lot of similarities but also a lot of differences. So the bathymetry, the geography of all the islands and even the differences and the changes that you get within each island on different sides of each island, can play a big role on whether or not you're going to be successful in your spearfishing.
Where i live on the south side of Maui, which is actually the southwest side of Maui, it stays pretty shallow, relatively speaking, not getting more than, i would say at the most, 500 feet deep. What we're doing here is almost a hybrid style of hunting. We're hunting on deep reef but in water that's also deep enough to accommodate pelagic fish. We're using reel guns, so there's a reel on our gun that's attached to a monofilament shooting line and a spear, and that spear can either have a flopper on it, i use a double flopper to where there's two staggered floppers on there for double the protection to prevent a fish from sliding off. Or you can use a slip tip, the flopper shafts are a little bit more suitable for hunting down on the reef, just in case if you shoot a fish and the shaft hits a rock you're not going to damage the slip tip and make that incapable of further use. So the flopper shafts are great for the reef whereas the slip tips a little bit more suitable for for open water, you don't want to really be shooting a slip tip into any rocks or anything like that, they can get quite expensive, so you don't want to damage that.
Also we use a belt on our reel or a reel on our belt as well just in case the line on our reel on our gun is all used up, we can go ahead and attach our gun to the reel on our belt and have a little bit more protection and a little bit more time to buy. Just in case you shoot a big ono or a big wahoo or something like that. On, say, like the big island, where it gets deep quick, it's more suitable in that area to use a breakaway setup. A breakaway setup, you don't really necessarily use a reel on the gun, you have your shaft and more than times a knot, a slip tip, is going to be the best type of shaft to use in that blue deep water that the big island has. And then you're going to have a float line or a bungee connected to that shaft and float at the other end of it. So that's your drive train. When you shoot a fish with that type of a setup, it all breaks away from the gun and the fish will go more times than not with that deeper water, the fish is going to sound or dive deep and hopefully your buoy and your drive train is strong enough to support the weight and the strength of the pull of that fish and the hopefully the buoy will come back up to the surface and you're able to land your fish in that matter. Also it's nice to have a bungee, so you can go ahead and try to pull your fish up quick to get it prevent it from getting bit by any sharks or being attacked or eaten or taxed by any sharks.
Pole Spears
One of the things that's kind of been ingrained in the Hawaiian culture and it's a little bit more primitive than using a gun with a trigger on it, with a trigger mechanism, a lot of times people will use pole spears or they are referred to more times than not here as a three prong. So a pole spear can have a three prong where you have three prongs and when you shoot a fish they open up almost acting as a barb to keep the fish on the pole spear. Or you can use a slip tip on the end of the pole spear or a flopper, even maybe a double flopper at the end of that pole spear. And more times than not without with that type of weapon, you're going to have to get a lot closer to the fish of what you're hunting, in order to have a successful shot and to land a successful shot on the fish, with the chance of landing it. That's a little bit more primitive, a little bit more difficult than using a spear gun that's propelled with bands and a trigger mechanism.
Hawaiian Sling
You can also use a
Hawaiian sling, but ironically enough a Hawaiian sling isn't very popular with spearfishing in Hawaii. You're going to find that more so in the Bahamas and you can look that up with
Andre Musgrove's how-to spearfishing guide in the Bahamas. But the Hawaiian sling isn't really used too much around here, so you might want to look into that with Andre's video.
Flashers
Some of the tools that we use to lure fish in, that would otherwise just swim by us and not be interested in what's going on in our vicinity whatsoever, are flashers. Flashers can be a variety of different things that you can use, i'm sure that you've seen a lot of different things used in videos on social media and whatnot. What i like to use are a strand of six discs on ball bearing snap swivels and at the bottom of that strand of flashy discs i like to have a buzz bomb, which is basically it's a metallic skirt, that almost looks like a squid or an octopus or like a hula dress, reflective hula dress, that's dancing around on the bottom of the the strand of flashers. So if you were to have a pelagic fish such as an ono which is very typical on Maui, it would get a little bit more interested in what's going around in the vicinity as opposed to not being interested in just swimming away. Or possibly on the big island, if you're maybe doing a shore dive and you're hunting mahi mahi, ono, or blue marlin, white marlin, stripe marlin, or even better ahi that maybe can bring those fish in.
Chum
Also in conjunction with the flashers we like to use chum. What i use typically are the carcasses from my previous kills and i like to keep the strips of the skin from the carcasses and when i'm in the water i will scale the skin and the scales will fall down and i also like to make nice chunks out of the skin. The skin usually sinks really slow and that stays up in the water column, a little bit more suited for the pelagic fish that might swim by, in conjunction with the flashers. And things like parts of the body of the carcasses that are used like the spine or the heads or any kind of anything with bones or fins, tends to sink a little bit deeper, a little bit quicker, and so those portions of the chum are a little bit more suited for the reef fish that we're hunting. Some of the chum sinks slow, some of the chum sinks quick, you have all your boundaries covered, there's chum up in the water column for pelagic fish, but also you have the heavier chum with the bones that's sinking down for the reef fish to get interested when you're making drops down there. On the big island sardines are great for chum, you could also use the carcass from your previous kills as well, but sardines are are usually really good over there. We also have a bait fish in Hawaii named opelu. Opelu are a really great fish to use as bait if you can get them. Sometimes i use a three prong to get them, sometimes you could use a sabiki rig to sabiki them up but if you have an opelu that's injured or even a dead opelu, you can use that and throw that in the water towards a fish, if a pelagic fish is swimming by, to get it interested or you can let it sink to the bottom, if you're hunting reef fish as well, but if you are letting it sink to the bottom, hopefully it'll get there before all of the other little vulture fish try to pick it apart. So an opelu is a great bait fish as well.
Throw Flashers
Also what we like to use are throw flashers. If you can't get a bait fish, an artificial throw flasher is great, such as an one inch pvc pipe, with some reflective or holographic tape on there, you can use a spoon, you can use a cd, anything that you can find that's reflective and throw in the water in the direction of a fish to maybe catch its attention, to draw its attention away from you, maybe to get the fish a little bit more inquisitive to come within range of you being able to pull the trigger and pulling a nice shot off on a fish.
Summary
So to summarize everything up, Hawaii is a great place for freediving and spearfishing and all kinds of activities in the water. It's not a very forgiving place, it's very rugged and it's very raw. It's exposed to a lot of weather and a lot of current and a lot of wind, so you've got to be really knowledgeable on how the weather works around the islands and you got to be up to date on the forecast and make sure that you're very diligent with that. Out of any place in the world that i've ever traveled to spearfish, Hawaii by far is the most difficult place to spearfish. The fish are extremely intelligent, they've been hunted for thousands of years and it's no easy feat to shoot a fish here.
A lot of the diving requires that you dive very deep to shoot fish, i've seen a lot of people come out to Hawaii and they're humbled with the level of difficulty that it is to shoot fish. Sometimes expert spearos from different parts of the world travel out here and i see that they struggle with spearfishing in Hawaii. So Hawaii is not an easy place to spearfish, but it's very rewarding. If you have a nice day on the water, there's a lot of wildlife to experience and if you are up to date with your forecasting and knowing how the weather is, you can get some of the best days of your life out on the water out here and experience some of nature's most beautiful things that it has to offer.
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