Hook-Up In Hawaii

One of the world’s greatest vacation destinations keeps luring anglers as well as tourists. The Hawaiian Islands act as a mid-Pacific aggregator of pelagic game fish, and it’s been that way since time immemorial.

Anglers who pursue billfish, tuna and other big-game battlers have been attracted to these islands for nearly a century, and Hawaiian waters gained an international reputation for dependably delivering world-class sport fishing all year round. Few among us don’t know that Hawaii regularly produces blue marlin over 1,000 pounds more often than any other venue on Earth.

Modern anglers have pursued game fish on rod and reel in the Hawaiian Islands since the early 1900s. The first American known to do so was W.C. Bradbury, a prominent member of The Tuna Club of Catalina Island, America’s first big-game fishing club. Bradbury apparently traveled to Hawaii from California in 1914 to verify reports of plentiful schools of yellowfin tuna and monstrous “swordfish” (which California anglers called marlin in those days).

Pump and wind! It's all eyes on deck as an angler works a big marlin off Kona, a place famous for producing granders. On the Big Island of Hawaii, Bradbury indeed became impressed with the amazing battles he experienced.

Not only did he confirm such rumors, Bradbury quickly realized the fishing opportunities were even greater than anticipated. He helped local anglers found the Hawaii Tuna Club (later renamed the Hawaii Big Game Fishing Club).

Within two years of Bradbury’s first visit, the Tuna Club of Catalina Island stated that a “proper game-fishing launch” was dispatched to Hawaii from California. The boat went into service for visiting sportsmen at Haleiwa on the north shore of the island of Oahu, in the days when Waikiki was a beautiful beach, but the other side of the island consisted of a swamp.

Hawaii’s stature as a sport-fishing destination grew steadily in the years before World War II. Fishing legends of the time like S. Kip Farrington stopped through the islands and fished with members of the Hawaii Tuna Club in the 1930s. Farrington later reported his positive impressions in his book “Pacific Game Fishing.”

“More than 10 different varieties of major game fish are caught on the grounds off these islands and in the channels between them at various times of year,” Farrington wrote. “The water is exceptionally deep, very beautiful in color and warm, and there are always plenty of birds to lead you to the fish. The two major areas, Waianae, which is about a 50-minute ride by motor from Honolulu, and the grounds off the Kona coast at Kailua on the island of Hawaii, usually have very calm water.”

After World War II, the charter sport fishery really began to blossom. Thousands of GIs fell in love with Hawaii – Pearl Harbor notwithstanding – and learned of the bounty of island waters during stopovers for R&R. Many later lived up to their vows to return to this paradise while others simply never left and started a new life, some doing so in the sport-fishing businesses.

By the late 1950s, Kona grew to be known as a place where blue marlin could be caught virtually every day of the year, the only place on the planet that could deliver the prized game fish so dependably. In 1959, the Hawaiian International Billfish Tournament, which emulated the successful formula of the Masters Tournament, began to attract international attention. Celebrities and fishing teams converged on the quiet Kona community and marveled at the calm-water lee of Hawaii’s largest and most active volcanoes.