Hawaii - Part 1

I was fortunate enough to receive an invitation to travel to Hawaii a couple weeks ago, we would be staying on Oahu for the first 2 days and then flying to Maui for a week. As any self-proclaimed fly fishing enthusiast would do I started doing a lot of reading and Google research about what might be possible to catch without having to spend hard earned money on a guide. I discovered a few things, 1) People don’t fly fish in Hawaii, 2) The fishing in Hawaii is not incredible(though it does have its moments) nor are these islands a major fly fishing destination by any means. However, the islands do hold some key species that I would be focusing my efforts on, the Bonefish and a couple species of Trevally.

The Bonefish in Hawaii are BIG. They aren’t the 3 or 4lb runts you can catch all day in Florida.. These Hawaiian Bonefish often average in the 6lb range and many of these guides consistently get into fish over 10lbs. Its fairly common to read articles or here people talk about the fact that if you want to target the world record then Hawaii is where to do it. Bonefish are a flats fish and there are not many flats that exist throughout the island chain except on Oahu where we were planning on staying for a couple days. This was great news as it meant I had a chance to at least cast to some of these spooky fish. Poking around further we found that the island did have one fly shop and they just happened to have a website(www.nervouswaterhawaii.com). This site would end up being our Bonefish manual for Hawaii. We began our prep work by tying well over 100 flies including your basic baitfish patterns such as Clousers, Deceivers, and other big bodied streamers along with Mantis Shrimp and crab imitations. All these patterns came off the Nervous Water website and if anyone is planning on visiting Oahu I encourage you to go to this site and read Clay’s blogs.

We got to Oahu late afternoon and immediately started scouting areas that appeared to be flats, and with a couple locations selected we decided to relax, have a few beers and think about a monster Bonefish. Morning came and we bolted out the door to our first spot. This spot was definitely a flat but unfortunately we had hit it at a high tide and getting out was proving to be impossible. With a long drive to the next spot and only a couple hours to fish we started blind casting with no success. That afternoon we made our way to the Nervous Water fly shop and received a few locations that would be accessible at a high tide the next day.

This is the first flat.. not so great on a high tide.


The next morning found us making a little bit longer drive to hit the new flat. We were surprised to see a couple other guys rigging their rods when we arrived. Being new to the area and not wanting to get in the way of any locals we stopped to talk to one of the guys. It happened to be Clay the owner of Nervous Water Fly Shop. We picked his brain as long as we could about this flat and about our adventure to Maui. Clay is a great guy and extremely willing to give advice and definitely provided us with some. If you are going to go to Oahu and need a guide these are the dudes to look up. We fished the flat for a few hours and once again got skunked, but getting skunked isn’t so bad with scenery that great.

Me being bald and making some casts on the flat we found the 2nd day.

Sorry no fish pictures in this one... we didn’t start catching fish until we got to Maui.

-Part 2 coming soon-