For years now, when I put my bait and jigs down near the bottom at a certain ledge on the Windward side, something would grab it and rock me but when I pulled to break off the snag, the feeling was stretchy before the hook tore free. The weird thing was I always got my leader and hooks back without any nicks. I suspected it was a tako but no one believed me. The next likely suspect was a roi, which I’ve caught there a few times in slack conditions.

On this outing last week, it was too calm in the morning with very little wind and not much of a ripple on the surface. The bottom fish weren’t at the normal spots and nothing wanted the fresh opelu I trolled out to 300ft and back into 70ft, covering 2 square miles. Finally, after 12pm, a ball of bait showed up under the kayak and 2 opelu came up. I put one out on the unweighted “flat line” and an aha immediately pestered and killed it. Since the opelu was still intact, I put it down on a weighted line and before it reached the bottom something grabbed it. Luckily I was holding the rod so I could wrest the creature away from the rocks and a tako popped up!

I’ve never kept a tako and wasn’t sure how to dispatch it. I ended up putting it on the deck of the yak and stabbing it between the eyes with the big brainer I use. It eventually lost its color but had leaked out chocolate brown ink all over the yak. I put it in my fish bag and wondered how I’d process it.

By now it was 1pm and I had been struggling to find biting fish since 9am. I went back out to the dependable damashi spot and marks began to appear. I hooked something strong with headshakes and was surprised to land a 14inch almaco jack, a type of Kahala, that is farm raised under the name “Kona Kampachi“. I kept it, hoping it was too young to be infested with worms, like most kahala are. My 15lb damashi got busted off on the next drop by a strong running fish so I put on a store bought rig with fish skin flies and 25lb branch lines. I couldn’t hook anymore almaco jacks but suddenly the opelu and small halalu started biting the damashi. I can only attribute that frenzy to the solar lunar bite period turning on.

It was later than I had expected to stay out so I had to leave the fish biting. The tako’s ink was all over my gear and fish bag but surprisingly didn’t smell too bad and cleaned up fairly easily.

My family felt sorry for the tako and didn’t want to eat it after watching various octopus documentaries showing how smart they are, so my neighbor accepted the task of cleaning and smoking it. He’ll do a guest post showing how to easily turn a raw tako into a delicious meal. For now these photos of the resulting, super ono smoked tako will have to do.

I cleaned the little almaco and there were off-white, roundish 1-inch strands about the diameter of dental floss embedded in the spinal column that I could pull out. Assuming they were juvenile tape worms, I was pretty grossed out. I quickly filleted the fish for practice since I had never cleaned a kahala before and was surprised the fillet was darker than a yellow spot papio, which the thick skin and small scales resembled. I considered dumping the fillets but decided to check them carefully for worms and have my sister pan fry them for me dad.

I was stunned when my picky dad said “it’s a good fish” and my sister said the skin crisped on the bottom of the pan and separated from the meat which had turned white. She said it was one of the best tasting fish she has pan fried. Who would have thought!

So a very slow outing resulted in identifying 2 very sustainable food sources, tako and almaco jack. I’ll try to do another post on the lifecycle of amberjack (kahala) tape worms. It’s a bit gross but explains why almost all kahala have worms.