I fished between the New Moon and Full Moon, and the bite was incredibly slow. I went out as deep as 300ft, and covered 5 miles in 6 hrs and barely marked fish on the fish finder. For the 3rd trip in a row, I got a Hail Mary fish as I was heading in, to put in my empty fish bag. A strong pulling yellow spot papio hit the damashi on the same 100ft reef and came up dusky colored like a kahala. When I reached land, a siren sounded and I was informed that a tsunami watch had started. That transitioned to an actual tsunami warning and I left Waianae for town at 4pm and crawled through traffic, with 4 stalled cars, multiple emergency vehicles and 1 accident along with way, reaching home at 6pm. Turns out town started evacuating at 3pm so the town traffic wasn’t as bad as it could have been.

The underwater camera showed that the hagi (trigger fish) and small moana were still around on the bottom, but the desirable predators were absent. Notice how blues and green tints show up well at 170ft but the red of the moano in the center-left looks dark with a white spot. Maybe they felt the initial earthquake reverberations and decided not to come in to feed, instead finding a safe place to ride out the tsunami?

The 2lb yellow spot was still dark colored in death. Maybe it was under duress because of the unusual activity in the ocean? I gave the yellow spot to a friend and he said it was “excellent” as sashimi.