Future Blue Water Hunters

My son Luke and his best friend Josh have determined they will be spear fisherman and as such they have bought spearguns and are now undergoing the practice and experience gathering  it takes to learn the skills needed to swim long, deep and quiet and track large fish to spear and bring home for dinner.

Stalking and spearing wild fish in the blue waters of Hawaii is not an easy thing to do, it takes skill and practice. And as such yesterday afternoon they entered the water at Kailua pier, Luke wearing Mannix, "Killer Millers", weight belt and made their first attempts at swimming into the blue sea with a gun and practice pulling back the strong bands needed to load the spear for shooting.

There was a southwest swell hitting Kailua Bay so it wasn't a great spearfishing session, but it was a good opportunity to try to learn how to swim and load their guns in rough moving water. Since the afternoon session at Kailua Bay was not optimal we headed down to Kua Bay the following morning to try again in calmer water.

 As I sat watching Luke and Josh enter the sea,  I saw the catamaran Muana Iwa off on the horizon heading north. Lukes sister Kailana is working full-time this summer at Ocean Sports Waikoloa. This week she is working day and night on this boat as a deck hand on a teen venture summer program. It was fun to look at Luke and Josh in the blue Pacific in front of me and glance to the horizon and see a sailboat my daughter was sailing on miles offshore heading north. Lucky I live Hawaii!

While chasing an octopus that Luke hoped to bring home for his aquarium he and Josh got caught in inches deep water when a wave came through and bounced them over the reef. Unhurt and embarrassed they lost the octopus and a fair amount of self respect for turning their backs on the ocean, something I have drilled into them since they were in kindergarden not to do.

Chasing large ocean fish with a speargun is no easy task. It is a physical and psychological game pitting you against big powerful fish. You have to be able to swim for hours, diving frequently to deep water to follow and shoot a fish than can easily weigh thirty plus pounds. Even after you accomplish the highly demanding task of finding, following, diving down and spearing a fish, you still must race to the surface to get a breath of air and then haul on your spears attached line to get the thrashing monster close enough so you can kill it with your knife, attach it to your fish line and then reload and go after another.

I first heard the term "Poke Fish" from Mannix Miller, my old roommate from the mid seventies here in Kona. "You wanna go poke some fish?",  he asked me the day after I met him when I was 19 years old.  "Sure" I told him, not really knowing what he meant. We spent the next five hours diving off his 16' aluminum skiff chasing fish. Him spearing, "Poking fish" and me swimming along behind him playing bagboy stuffing the thrashing fish into Mankicks fish bag. He shot 'em and I stuffed them into a net bag I carried as I swam along behind him dragging the increasingly heavy and bloody bag of fish. Seeing as how this was a year or so after the movie "Jaws" came out I found myself wondering if I was just a wonderful chum bag for some kind of jagged toothed shark sneaking up behind me!

I learned a lot from Mannix some 36 years ago here in the waters off of Kona and hope that my son learns as well. He and Josh are willing and able, but I am a poor teacher of the skills needed to be a true blue water hunter. I have never been more than a bag boy for those who knew how to hunt the sea. My mentors are either too old to help with my boys education or have passed away from the seas anger. My best friend Scott first taught me a bit about spearfishing in the deep blue Kona waters in 1975, but I was still nothing more than an underwater sherpa carrying his fish filled bag of booty.

I hope that Josh and Luke continue their interest in blue water hunting, it is a great physical workout and we could sure use the free fish for dinner! I wish that Scott had not gone down with his boat in hurricane Hugo,  I would so very much loved to have him here to teach my son how to become an blue hunter like him, which he most certainly was.

Aloha Scotty! I wish you were here to help me with these boys. Since you're otherwise occupied, I guess I'll just have to do the best I can to point them in the right direction. 

A Hui Ho my friend!  Help me keep an eye on these boys in the sea as they follow in your finsteps in search of fine big fish to poke.

Laters...Brian