Holoholo: Finding solitude and fish on the Windward side of Oahu

I met Tobias on the water once, just weeks before his 2 year high school teaching assignment ended. While we didn’t get to team up and fish together, he left this treasure trove of vivid memories for the rest of us to enjoy.

Tobias Tillemans: I grew up in New York and Minnesota and fished obsessively in both places, dunking worms off docks or, later, chasing trout. I had a spell guiding flyfishing in Alaska before I started teaching High School science in Seattle, where I started fishing from a kayak. I’ve done some paddling expeditions in Baja and Alaska, always chasing fish.

A few weeks after I moved to Hawaii, I bought a 2017 Hobie Compass Outback and an old pickup to haul it. I was psyched out of my mind to fish; there is no better way to put it but, though I’ve fished my whole life, I didn’t have a clear grasp of how the ocean or the marine ecosystem behave in Hawaii. I figured I would just have to figure it out. I joined the Oahu Kayak Fishing Club Facebook group, read everything anybody posted, asked some occasional questions, then just fished a lot.

I quickly learned that nobody kayak fishes from where I lived in Hau’ula, on the windward side. In two years of fishing, I never saw another kayak. Occasionally there was a skiff. The weather’s not good, it’s sharky, and there aren’t many shibis, but it was quick and easy for me to launch from the beach. Kayak fishing is only partly about catching fish for me anyway, with the rest being a mix of a desire for solitude, independence, and a connection with some great power that occupies the blue-water ocean and also the mountain ridges of the Hawaiian Islands. Hau’ula is an excellent place for seekers of these other parts of fishing. The dripping wet rainforest backdrop is shot through with basalt cliffs, sliced occasionally by waterfalls, and capped by an ever-changing tapestry of clouds in shades of gray, peach, white and purple. Solitude is found in great abundance. The place has mana, and using a motor to get out there would have diminished the experience for me and the reward of every fish I caught. I also worry about the impact of over-fishing and motor noise, and I can rest easy fishing a self-powered boat.

As a teacher, I had to work from 9 am-4 pm, but if I was quick, I could fish before or after work. I gradually made it further offshore until I was maybe half a mile out, guessing that, with such a productive nearshore ecosystem, I’d easily find predator fish. It didn’t work that way. This part of the ecosystem is just too heavily impacted by overfishing. I was not that excited about this kind of fishing anyway. Outside the reef, a different ecosystem exists that is part of that high mountain and deep ocean spirit, and I hoped to have a brush with it. The elegance, beauty, and power of the pelagic fish are undeniable, and I knew that catching those fish would be a way to commune with the energy I was out there seeking.

My first visit to what I considered proper pelagic fish habitat, about 200’ of water, was spooky, and I didn’t even fish. I just peddled out there and sat for about 10 minutes, wrapping my head around the deafening aloneness of the place, and trying to build a sense of safety when I felt pretty unsafe. The swells rolled under the boat, I watched clouds form and dissipate over the Ko’olauloa range, and I peddled back in. From then on, getting back out there was pretty much all I could think about. 

Eventually I started catching bait. I tried for akule in the dark, but those were some of my least safe experiences and, after losing my navigation before sunup on a not-good weather day, I gave up on them. For me, opelu hold some of that deep ocean mana which, for whatever reason, the akule do not. I found that 10 mph winds and 5’ swell were the worst weather forecast I could fish in. Soon I was comfortable offshore by myself, and I found some deeper structure, maybe old buoys or wrecks, and a jigging spot in 300’ that held a lot of 10-15lb papio and kahala.

I watched the birds head offshore in the morning and back in at night. I missed and broke off lots of fish but I caught lots of kawakawa (mackeral tuna). I was getting harassed sometimes by what I later learned were ono, and always by sharks. The sharks and the whales are both part of the beauty of the offshore ecosystem though, and I tried to appreciate them equally. I learned a lot from Bill Ho, Facebook, and YouTube, and was just having an amazing time out there.

In the spring, some aku (skipjack tuna) and mahi-mahi turned up in the mix. The iridescent aku are carved by the ocean from polished aluminum and could beat their tail fast enough in the boat to create a hum, like a mosquito.

The mahi-mahi is part tropical bird: social, prone to flight, and sometimes green, yellow, silver, orange, or blue, depending on its mood. 

The weather was always an issue, and sometimes I would be stuck on shore for weeks, but I got amas in the fall of 2022, which extended fishable weather for me up to my tolerance for nausea. I got better at running two lines, one deep and close and the other shallow and 200’ back, turning slow circles to keep them separated in the water. I learned to clear the second line before trying to fight a fish on the first and to give a fish time to eat before setting the hook. 

I finally landed an ono one morning in December 2022 before work. It was a little over 40 lbs. It hit at dawn on some structure in 160’ of water, and there was no mistaking what it was. It took half my line in 8 seconds. I played it gently, but I always felt I was on a ticking clock with sharks in that area right up until the fish was on the boat. I got a kage shot on it after about 20 minutes, hoisted it onto the boat, got covered in ono slime, and still had time to make it to 7-11 for more ice before taking a shower and hustling to class.

This spring, I got serious about missing fewer fish. If I can get fish to eat my opelu, I wondered, why are so many of them making off with my bait, my hook, or both? I stopped fishing stingers or wire unless there were ono around and I downsized hooks, figuring this would lead to more confident strikes and less suspicious nibbling. I got picky about how the hook went through the opelu nostrils to keep the gap of the hook open, and changed how and when I set the hook: late and hard. I started to understand the changing daily and seasonal behavior of the opelu, and learned far too late that 10 lb floro catches way more bait. In a kayak, you can carefully study the behavior of bait and predators in a specific spot or piece of structure to learn how they react to bathymetry, currents, tides, and weather. I enjoyed puzzling out this ecology while feeling part of the greater Polynesian ecosystem, verdant and fragile, isolated in the middle of the vast Pacific Ocean. I explored new areas and occasionally fished with guys like Bill Ho and Max Reyes. 

In June, I sold my truck and boat to move back to the mainland with my wife and two girls, who harbor a deep and abiding desire to live closer to family. Once the kayak was gone the daydreams I would drift into of the sewing-machine twitch of an opelu on a damashi, or the scream of a rod going off, felt raw and painful.  I sold the boat as is, right down to the damashis, rubber bands and 5oz weights, rods, 5/0 hooks and wire rigs, but I brought back with me a full toolbox of skills. Now I live on a narrow but 700-foot-deep lake with schooling bait fish that are harassed all day by salmon and a supporting cast of trout species.  They seem to set up on shelves on about 100’ of water, heavily influenced by the thermocline. There are no sharks, but also no whales. I’ve seen some guys out there in decked-out Hobies, hunched over their fishfinders. The bird behavior is different, but I can read it with a whole new eye, and I am once again trolling Facebook Marketplace for a kayak and an old pickup with which to haul it.