The Bright Side: Innovators in sports

If break dancing is going to be considered as an official Olympic sport, local dignitaries should push for “Kona’s National Sport” to be added to the list — Sunset Watching.

You score by catching a green flash on camera. No flash, no points. All Sunset Watching needs is organization. It’s already being played everywhere you look. The sport just needs an innovator to take it to the top.

As already happens with paddling, surfing and fishing, novice watchers would come to Kona from far and wide to learn the “local secret.” Developed by innovative local watchers through years of trial and error, Kona athletes have solved the problems of stance and balance: have a cocktail in the offsetting hand.

For fishermen, the most exciting thing in the evening sky these days is not the sunset — it is the building moon of March. Veteran skippers are now tuning up and turning their efforts toward the big ones that Kona is most famous for.

Capt. Bryan Toney of Melee marlin fishing is not only in high anticipation of the big ones moving in, he is also sitting on his hands until he can get the most recent prototype of his Rubber Chucker in the water. The Rubber Chucker is a foam and rubber replica of a spearfish.

BT has developed this artificial bait because it is a proven fact that giant blue marlin eat spearfish. It is also well known that the spring run of spearfish in Kona often coincides with the spring arrival of big blues. Trolling the Rubber Chucker is just BT’s version of “match the hatch”.

Fly fishermen “match the hatch” as a fundamental way of approaching the day, so why not? Although BT has had a bit of success with the Rubber Chucker, he hasn’t caught the Giant he is after with it — yet.

When you are an inventor and an innovator, however, it’s all just another step in the process. Tweak this and change this a little, put it back out. Now, let’s see what happens!

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Capt. BT reported from the playing field on Friday that, indeed, the big ones are showing up. A skiff released a marlin “about 800 pounds after it burned up their electric reel and 600 pounders were reported on Huntress and Jun Ken Po.”

The largest blue marlin weighed so far in 2019 is a 781 pounder caught on Ihu Nui with Capt. McGrew Rice and the Clarence Clemons of the Cockpit, Carlton Arai. With big ones around, this may not stand long.

Capt. Gene Vanderhoek went out holoholo on March 13 to train a new crew and ended up catching his old crew — 72-year-old Skip Dasher — the largest fish of his angling career, a 708-pound blue. Dasher and company subdued their catch in a quick 15 minutes.

Earlier, crewman in training Brett Mowens caught a blue they tagged at 500-plus. They were back at the dock by 1 p.m. Now that is a mighty fine busman’s holiday!

On March 11, the High Noon caught a 670 pounder to back up a 642 they weighed in February. They are reported to have broken off a fish on Friday that could have been 800 pounds.

On March 14, Capt. Chad Contessa on a Bite Me boat weighed a 596-pound blue on Bite Me 1.

Based on an informal phone survey, nice ones tagged recently include a 650-plus released by Humdinger with Capt. Jeff Fay at the wheel. Marlin Magic II released one they called 550-plus and Kona Blue released one about 500 pounds and pulled hook on another, also about 500. Nasty Habit also released one that they called 500.

EZ Pickens has been fishing owners Brad and Vicky Picking every Saturday and Sunday since December. Up until last weekend, they averaged one blue a day for a total of 25 blues so far, as well as lots of stripes and spearfish. Their largest to date was in the 500-pound range, tagged and released. In big game fishing, no hot streak lasts forever and last weekend they finally experienced a fishless day. No amount of innovation has ever been successful at overcoming the fact that no hot streak lasts forever.

That’s why they call it “fishing” and not “catching” but all in all, things are looking up on the Big Fish front. We are just past the first quarter moon, so if conditions hold, there should be plenty more big fish stories to come.

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Although a Rubber Chucker is an innovative way to “match the hatch” it is far too large to be used in actual fly fishing, from whence that saying comes. There are innovators and inventors in fly fishing for marlin though, and one Kona skipper is creating a niche for himself by partnering with a guy that has figured out how to be successful in that unlikely endeavor.

Capt. Kevin Nakamaru of Northern Lights sport fishing is awaiting confirmation from the International Game Fishing Association on a potential fly fishing world record. Kevin and his crew led lady angler Wanda Hair Taylor to a 33-pound spearfish, caught on a fly rod with 20-pound tippet.

Wanda travels and fishes with Capt. Jake Jordon of North Carolina. Jake has been single mindedly focused on figuring out how to catch billfish on fly rods since 1991. Jake lost his wife that year, decided that life was too short and walked away from a career as an engineer and went fishing full time. Once an engineer always an engineer, so Jake applies his expertise to fly fishing, and his developments are fascinating.

If you approach fly fishing for billfish with the eye and mind of an engineer, you would identify the impediments to success, and try to solve the problems. The first problem is that what you have chosen to do makes about as much sense as trying to shoot an elephant with BB gun. However, this creates the fundamental question – how do you do get it done?

The problems Jake identified to solve are: 1. how to get a fish to spend more time on the surface; 2. how to reduce the percentage of broken line/tippets; and 3. how can the mechanics of fly angling be improved?

It is a simple fact that you can’t catch a fish unless it is at the surface. If you can’t touch it, you can’t catch it. It is that simple.

Another simple fact is that you can’t catch a fish if you break the line. Broken lines are entirely fatal to the exercise. A fly tippet is the lightest section in a fly fishing line configuration. Because this is the section of line that will break first, this is line class that a world record claim will be judged by. To get to the judging table more often, Jordan figured out that “shock absorbers” in the line configuration reduced broken tippets.

Using 20-pound line class tippet as example, this is how Capt. Jordon rigs his lines:

Starting at the fly and hook, there are 11 inches of 100-pound mono “bite tippet,” or what us normal folks call a “leader.” Next is 16 inches of 20-pound mono and this is the “tippet.”

Moving up the line, the next section is double twisted 20-pound test mono that is a graduation step to nine feet of 60-pound test mono that Jake calls the “butt section.” This section is now attached to 30-feet of 60-pound test fly line.

Next up is an 80-foot long section of 50-pound test mono which is called the “running line.” From here, the entire set up is joined to 65-pound gelspun backing and this is what fills the reel. There may be 500 yards of the “backing” here, depending on the reel in use.

Jake employs a number of connection systems along the length of this configuration including double-loop connections from a Bimini twist, Hufnagle loops and loops spliced into 80-pound dacron.

This entire system is about 120 feet long and the remaining 500 yards of line on the reel is the 65-pound “backing.”

When the entire 120-foot configuration has been pulled off the reel by a fish, the angler reduces the drag to only one-pound. Jake says that this line set up will sink below the surface, even if the fish is running on the surface. He said that this influences the fish to react as if it is being pulled on from down below.

Downward pressure results in an inclination to go the opposite direction, and stay on the surface. Since you can’t catch a fish unless it is on the surface, this is another remarkable development that in retrospect, is simple — if you approach it from the perspective of an engineer and his goal No. 1.

Jake claims that he can tie the hook on the end of his rig to any fixed object, walk back 130 feet, pull, and the system will stretch up to 20 feet! He says that this stretch gives the angler a lot more time to adjust the drag than a conventional system and adjusting the drag correctly before the line breaks is crucial. These two improvements help to achieve goal No. 2.

Fatigued anglers make errors. If a fish goes deep and stays deep, the animal is safe in its environment, only slightly bothered by the light fly tackle. On the other end of the line, however, the human is in an unnatural state. Many anglers flog out trying to budge stubborn fish, so Jake approached the act of angling with more simple ideas.

After much experience with trial and error, Jake now says, “Do not bend the fly rod. Point the rod directly down the line and keep it that way.”

This may sound like blasphemy, but consider this: the most efficient way to pull any object on the other end of a rope or line, is straight from Point A to Point B. Most folks think you use the fishing rod to pressure a fish, but the truth is you can’t put any more pressure on the fish than the amount of drag set on the reel. This is one reason why heavy tackle anglers switched from straight butt rods to curved butt set ups. It is a more direct pull, both on and off the reel.

With light fly rods, Jake teaches his student to stand sideways to the rod, which is pointed at the line. The angler leans toward the front of the boat to pull line in, then leans aft to wind it on the reel. A whippy fly road can’t lift much, but a direct pull on the reel can exert as much pressure as the drag will allow.

Between 1991 and 2010, Jordan caught only 19 Pacific blue marlin on fly fishing tackle. Between 2010 and today he has caught 69 Pacific blues and 11 Atlantic blues, owing the increase in success to this system. On top of his personal success, he runs a chain of fly fishing schools and the statistical success of his students catching all species of billfish on fly gear is the proof in the puddin’.

Capt. Jordan said that Kevin Nakamaru and his crew on Northern Lights have mastered his system and he sends all his Kona bound anglers to them.

In a harbor with more than 60 charter fishing boats, this is a pretty good niche to have all to yourself, and by the sounds of things, is only going to grow larger.