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Hawaii bonefish report

3K views 1 reply 2 participants last post by  FLGator 
#1 ·
... or non-report, as I really only got out for a couple of hours but I hope this report is of some use to you who travel there anyway.

My sweetie and I were on Maui and Oahu (only). I did not even string up the rod on Maui due to very rocky shores with big waves on the beaches this time of year plus I wanted to save my fishing tokens for Oahu which has known flats.

Oahu was a different story - lots of white coral-based flats wrapping from the southern harbors around Ewa / Hickam AFB to Waikiki all the way past Kaneohe which has enormous flats of the pancake and shore reef variety which really gets the blood boiling just to look at.

The rest of the island is lava rock with beaches and lagoons where I saw a few of the biggest bones of my life with a few exceptions in the Atlantic tropics.

I cashed in a couple of my fishing hours on the flats at Kaneohe, which is blessed with huge flats stretching for miles along the shoreline north toward surfer's heaven on the North Shore.

Surprisingly, the flats were void of fish other than one cuda a few inches long. I took a look at the south side across from the flats at Hickam (off limits) and after spotting two average sized bones got kicked off the beach by an armed patrol boat as a nuke sub passed by.

Those were the only average sized bones I saw the whole time, the other 5 would stretch from the thigh to the ground if I'd ever had the pleasure of hoisting one. The biggest was a ghostly blue-green-gray beast cruising in about a foot of water where children were kicking up sand in the hotel lagoon. The valet said there are oi'o the size of small sharks in the lagoons but the no-fishing policies are strictly enforced. I thought about a pre-dawn excursion, but my conscience got the better of me.

Never had a chance to wet a line for the rest of the trip, no regrets as it was a romantic vacation not a fishing trip. However, it certainly laid some groundwork for a trip in the future...

Coming from the east coast, breaking the trip up on the west coast makes things easy. I would suggest a March trip, stopping in Washington, Oregon or British Columbia for steelhead en route. I'm sure you could work out a deal with the concierge to hold onto your steelhead gear while you continue onto Oahu to chase the scary big bones, or ship it home if you don't plan to stop on the way back. I would stop both ways myself as I love the pacific northwest.

The flights were really affordable this way e.g. BOS-SEA; SEA-HNL, etc. Like $150 before tax/fees.

These huge bones will haunt me until I return... and I WILL return!



 
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