I’ve still never seen a single ulua around Oahu’s wrecks. I’ve sure heard plenty stories though. I’ve heard about swarms of uluas, big uluas that make their homes in the interiors of these artificial reefs. I’ve heard enough stories to provoke me into searching for these fabled fish. That’s how I ended up on the Sea Tiger one morning. The search for prey is probably the reason the onos were there too.
Scuttled to make an artificial reef, the Sea Tiger sits upright on the sea floor 120’ below the surface. It’s a fairly new “wreck,” and reef life is still working on initiating it into the brotherhood of underwater habitats. It’s a big wreck too. Sometimes on Waikiki’s YO-257 you can see end to end, but the Sea Tiger is a bigger ship in dirtier water. This wreck’s big enough to have two moorings, a feature anyone who has shared a mooring with a SCUBA boat can appreciate. It’s also only a short paddle from a big beach with safe parking and showers in the middle of town. I didn’t know it yet that fall morning, but by that afternoon I added the possibility of an ono-sighting to my list of incentives for diving the Sea Tiger.
Kurt and I launched early from Ala Moana Beach Park in order to beat the SCUBA charters out to the Sea Tiger. Over the flats, past the surfers, and out to the precise spot in the open, blue expanse indicated by Kurt’s GPS. We hoped to arrive before the SCUBA divers in order to search for big game before a wall of bubbles scared it off. I can’t remember now if we succeeded in this goal or not. If so, it wasn’t for long. Boats showed up and left, replaced by new boats, for much of the morning (recreational SCUBA divers are restricted to less than 20 minutes on the wreck due to its depth).
Fish were scarce, but I knew there were opelu kala around. That’s not exactly the fish I had come for, but it is at least the tastiest of all the surgeonfish (which, frankly, is like being the smartest student on the short bus or the sanest patient in the whole asylum). Of course, once I decided to target them, I couldn’t even find opelu kala anymore. I was dropping to about 70 feet and leveling off, leaving me 20-30 feet off the deck, where I patrolled for dinner. After a few of these dives I spotted a legal-sized opelu kala. I descended towards him, of course causing him to flee deeper upon noticing my pursuit. I followed him a short distance, closing in, fully extending the gun, ultimately depressing the trigger. The shaft entered behind one gill, exited just behind the other, and came to a stop stuck in the ship. It wasn’t coming out easily; I would have to head up and come back for it in a few minutes. My next dive I began fiddling with the shaft, trying to close the barb and finesse it out. At 105 feet that quickly got frustrating, so I braced my fins against the deck and YANKED! The shaft pulled free, along with a golf-ball sized chunk of the Sea Tiger. I shrugged it off. Oops, what are you gonna do?
I had had my fill by this point- battling at 105 feet for a fish I would normally pass up at 30 feet. My shooting line was twisted into a natty dread of monofilament, still threaded through an opelu kala at some point, but I just threw it all in a heap into the kayak. I took off my weights and fins and added them to the heap too. I had barely had time to gut the opelu kala when Kurt yelled, “ONOOOOOS!” Without putting back on my fins or weights, I grabbed the handle of my camera housing and slipped back into the water, kicking like a frog, futilely chasing after one of the ocean’s swiftest predators. Kurt grabbed the camera and I returned to the kayak to pull on fins and ready my gun, a stock (one band) Marc Valentin 110 with a reel, at this point accessorized with the opelu kala hopelessly tangled in the shooting line.
Untangling the line was proving to be quite a puzzler. Reviewing the footage, you can at one point see my legs hanging into the water as an ono swims almost under the kayak, prompting yells, wails of impatient agony, from Kurt to hurry me along. Eventually I do get in, and see Kurt is close to the prowling onos, within 10 feet, and they’re big.
I closed in on the fish too, or at least the distance between us closed. I guess it was only by luck that the fish hung around so long in the first place; I can’t seem to recall making a stealthy, tactical approach. The onos seemed to just mill around us. Each fish in the pack exceeded 40 pounds, but there were a couple that really drew your attention. Getting to business, I moved at an angle to intercept their path. As they passed in a caravan from my right and at an angle slightly away from me, I picked out one larger individual. Briefly, he turned broadside to me, a mere 12 feet of the ocean’s vast expanse separating us. I extended the gun as he twitched back to a path angling away from me. Instinctively I fluttered off a few quick kicks and did my best Stretch Armstrong impersonation, trying to close the gap. Then I relaxed and let the gun lower.
If the situation required urgency I would have already blown it long ago. I knew I needed a really good shot if 1.) the single band and 6.3 mm shaft of my 110 were going to have the penetration power needed, and 2.) I was going to incapacitate it enough to prevent it from speeding off, spooling my reel, and taking my gun with it. The ono was well within range of the canons many divers use to spear them, but my gun is on the sissier side of the spectrum. Taking down a big ono with a Marc Valentin 110 is something like bringing down a deer with a .22. In the back of my mind there were still some questions about what sort of fury might be unleashed once I pulled the trigger on one of these guys, but I was pretty sure, kind of sure maybe, that I could land one if it veered off and came right at me.
Just then, one veered off and came right at me. This wasn’t the biggest of all, but it was definitely among the bigger ones. Definitely big, was the bottom line. It swaggered directly at me, then paraded broadside in close range- 6 feet or so. Close enough to activate the launch sequence. I gripped the gun’s handle with both hands, as though it was a Luger, took aim, and let the shaft do its thing. Immediately I saw I smacked it right in the gill plate, a great shot, but my nerves weren’t at ease just yet. The fish was obviously hurting, blood streaming out of it like smoke trailing a plummeting B-17. But did the shaft fully penetrate, allowing the barb to toggle open and grip the fish? I couldn’t tell, because the ono was dragging me in a counter clockwise circle; I couldn’t get a good look at its other side. Unsure of this critical detail, I played the bleeding fish gently. Fortuitously, I had changed the shooting line just the previous day. A little detail like that can be so important, a lesson I usually learn the hard way (for instance, had we had a second gun that day we could have picked up another ono, which kept swooping in on the fracas). Even with the ginger treatment I was giving the mortally wounded ono, it had pulled only a few feet of line from my reel.
Kurt went down with a knife and the idea of finishing the ono off once and for all. Up to this point the ono showed few hints of its speed and power, but Kurt must have roused up some sort of bad memories from the ono’s childhood, because it sprung back to life and thrashed away, taking a little more line from the reel and thwarting Kurt’s approach. Although unable to introduce his knife blade to the ono’s skull, Kurt did at least get a good look at the shot. It had indeed pierced through both gill plates. Now all I had to do was horse it up.
On the classic spearfishing video “Epic,” Travis Kashiwa narrates the footage of his struggle with a speared ono by saying, “I was just trying to make pretend I knew what I was doing. But as you can see, I had no clue.” I don’t know Travis Kashiwa, but by all accounts he’s an excellent diver, one whose prowess I could only hope to emulate. At this point I think I was doing a pretty fair impersonation. Just like Travis on “Epic,” I was getting thrashed about by an ono, without any real good idea of what I was doing. Things had pretty well turned into a rodeo; back and forth I rode the fish, trying to grind its brain to a halt with the cold steel of my knife. At last, a final shudder, the beast was subdued. Kurt and I lifted our heads from the water, the panorama of Honolulu’s skyline over our shoulder, exchanged a high five and let out cries of victory.
All this time a SCUBA charter was moored to the opposite end of the wreck, its divers oblivious to the thrilling encounter with the onos and the ensuing battle. On the beach, though, people took notice, some reconsidering swimming in the same waters as such a sea monster. We took it to Kurt’s bike shop and hung it on the scale. 55 pounds! I never weighed the opelu kala.
Next stop was my butcher block, the normal spot where I fillet fish, Kurt’s sidewalk. In all other respects Kurt maintains a real neighborly existence, but our propensity for catching fish must at times stretch his neighbors’ patience thin. Coolers of chum have ripened for days in the sun in his yard, and like I said, more than once I’ve turned his sidewalk into a sacrificial altar. I like to think we soothed things a little by handing out some ono steaks. There was plenty to go around after all.
Ono is one of the best, if not the best, food fish in Hawaii. It is suited for most any method of preparation. Forget sauces, spices, or stuffings, just heat it up and it’s delicious. Heck, don’t even bother with that. It doesn’t get much better than ono sashimi. Needless to say, I wasn’t disappointed to be eating ono instead of oats and canned peas for dinner night after night.
That ono is one of my greatest catches of all time. When I reach the Pearly Gates and St. Peter asks what I accomplished on Earth, I think I’ll start with, “Well, I never saw an ulua on a wreck, but let me tell you what I did see…” Even the footage Kurt grabbed of the ono rodeo makes me smile a little whenever I watch “Oahu Still Get Fish.” But big onos aren’t an anomaly on the Sea Tiger. There was an even larger one that I didn’t get. And since that day I’ve seen Harold Gibson boat one over 40 pounds that yanked two floats and a long tagline half way to Jalalabad in the time it took for his bluewater gun to stabilize from its recoil. Then on another occasion I saw a nice ono on the wreck but was unarmed. So, I’ve still never seen an ulua on one of our wrecks, darn it, but just maybe that’s because I divert too much attention toward the surface, toward the domain of the ono.
Thursday, September 18, 2008
Dream Day
“Dream Day”
Scattered about the living room, everyone reclines stagnantly after dinner. The meal Kurt prepared of pan-fried uku, like an eruption from Vesuvius, has stopped everyone in their tracks. Now Derek, Kurt, and his three friends (attractive, female friends, as Kurt and Derek’s luck would have it), gaze at the television, where “Legends of the Blue” plays. The classic spearfishing video stars Derek’s childhood idol, Bruce Ayau. A distinctive diver with his black ponytail and cotton socks, distinguished by his diving prowess which Derek could only dream of imitating.
Kurt, a scholar in all pursuits, appears to be studying the video, gleaning bits of information on stalking technique, diving form, and generally looking good on video that he can later apply. In actuality though, Kurt’s pondering another Longboard Lager- a scholar and a respectable drinker to boot. “Bruce takes advantage of the uku’s curiosity,” narrates the film just before the speakers project the pop of speargun bands slinging the shaft- the uku’s death knell. Derek was using his modicum of meteorological knowledge (limited mostly to haphazard observations followed by inane speculation) to forecast the next day’s dive conditions, but the sight of Bruce dispatching the uku prompts recollections of his own uku encounter.
From the surface, the sea floor eighty-five feet below was clearly visible. The water was clean off much of the southeast coast; Derek and Kurt knew because they were busy drifting past it in the current. A high tide winds the current up like a toy car, letting it go on the tide shift and turning the waters just offshore into an HOV lane. But the wind was moderate and the divers were able to drift alongside their kayak, straying on brief forays then scurrying to catch up, like a dog following its master.
A few fish already adorned Derek’s kui. Two moana kali, defying nature’s laws by becoming even more beautiful after death, glowed pink furthest down the line. They had been speared earlier around boulder patches before the current picked up. More recently a small uku was added. Like an armoire collector on Antique Roadshow, the uku had been thoroughly inspecting Kurt’s flasher. As Derek approached, the uku wafted away, but not fast enough, and nowhere near far enough. At 100 feet Derek caught up to the uku and fired his spear into it. Down but not out, the uku ran line off Derek’s Marc Valentin reel. But its efforts would succeed only in delaying its ultimate demise.
Now Derek was dropping through the blue water, rays of sunlight giving way to an unfolding deep blue expanse as he descended toward a boulder patch, serving as a mall for reef fish, a food court for a spearfisherman. Behind a ridge he took up residence, peering over its top while keeping most of his body hidden from view. Mamo fluttered atop coral heads in small groups, and a few hinalea loped along. A sandbar shark, a species whose hunched back looks in need of a chiropractor, slid in from the side then took off after getting a look. A minute and a half after Derek left the surface a pot-bellied uku suddenly appeared, surveying the reef from a slight elevation. Derek relaxed, melted his green and yellow wetsuit into the ridge’s algae as much as possible, but knew time was expiring. Noticing that it had halted its approach, Derek crept toward the big, silvery slab.
Life is good for a big uku. Unlike a law firm or internet chatroom, Oahu’s reefs are not thick with predators. An 18-pound uku is pretty much Chairman of the Board. If there was a movie about reefs around Oahu, The Rock would play the big uku.
However, word had passed from coral head to coral head that already today two ukus were impaled and dragged to the surface where they met their end- the work of divers. The big, silver uku contemplated this horror as a diver, camoflauged in purple and gray, drifted by on the surface eighty feet above. Years ago, when he lived at the rock outcropping by the sand pit on the shallow reef, a diver had fluttered towards him, a terrifying sight, cheeks puffed out, eyes bulging, then lunged forward and shot a spear, nicking his tail fin and drilling into the reef with an explosion of coralline algae shrapnel. Replaying it now in his primitive mind caused stifling apprehension, unnatural of a big uku. These very feelings gave rise to irritation, a disposition more fitting of a beast with such a toothy snarl. He recalled that his pet sea slug, Sylvester, was mortally wounded in the ordeal. He felt a tinge of anger.
After all, he’s the most efficient and genetically gifted predator on this reef. These days his gonads alone weigh as much as he did in his entirety the day of his near-death experience early in life. Now he has fangs, big ones, like some kind of nasty mamba from the Serengeti. Now he has a belly that can hold four shrimp, three nehu, a hinalea, and a baby uhu; he knows, he tried it last spring. Now he can swim faster, bite harder. Now he’s bad, and this is his domain. The strong current swept that diver past already, why should he worry about that? An uku of his caliber shouldn’t concern himself with anything more than hunting down a meal. Speaking of which, just exactly what is that he sees behind that ridge?
The uku was, indeed, safe from Kurt, the diver who already drifted by eighty feet overhead. Safe for the time being that is, as Kurt is fond of turning the predator into his prey. No uku larger than five pounds is ever really safe from Kurt Chambers, a lesson learned the hard way earlier in the day by a seven-pound specimen. Now Kurt, comfortable in this realm and keen to produce more meat for dinner, scanned his surroundings for a sign of a respectable fish. Behind him Derek burst to the surface and bellowed, “I think I’m gonna need some help!” Kurt wheeled to offer his assistance.
Derek elucidated the problem. “Gut shot on a big uku. My line feels slack and there’s a shark down there, so I don’t know…”
“Hold on, don’t pressure it,” Kurt counseled, following Derek’s snaking reel line first with his eyes, then with his fins. On the bottom Kurt found an 18-pound uku, its side a gaping wound expanding with every thrash against the spear. Its vigorous struggles gained it no ground, as the reel line had snagged a nub of coral. Kurt bounded forward, his left arm a pogo stick hopping across the bottom as his right hand extended and he took aim. All hope for escape was vanquished with a slight flex of Kurt’s trigger finger.
The narration of his favorite video brings Derek back to the present. “Bruce notices a flash in the distance,” announces the narrator in his deep, stoic voice. Distance closes between Bruce and the uku. Tired from a day of diving, Derek closes his eyes now, but he can envision the scene. Bruce glides deeper as the uku swaggers closer. The uku’s perpetual search for food will soon land him on the dinner plate, an irony that briefly plays in Derek’s mind, but then he’s asleep. The uku is no longer pixels on the screen; it’s right in front of him now. A familiar sight, though he would have to get used to the feeling of diving with these cotton socks and black ponytail.
Scattered about the living room, everyone reclines stagnantly after dinner. The meal Kurt prepared of pan-fried uku, like an eruption from Vesuvius, has stopped everyone in their tracks. Now Derek, Kurt, and his three friends (attractive, female friends, as Kurt and Derek’s luck would have it), gaze at the television, where “Legends of the Blue” plays. The classic spearfishing video stars Derek’s childhood idol, Bruce Ayau. A distinctive diver with his black ponytail and cotton socks, distinguished by his diving prowess which Derek could only dream of imitating.
Kurt, a scholar in all pursuits, appears to be studying the video, gleaning bits of information on stalking technique, diving form, and generally looking good on video that he can later apply. In actuality though, Kurt’s pondering another Longboard Lager- a scholar and a respectable drinker to boot. “Bruce takes advantage of the uku’s curiosity,” narrates the film just before the speakers project the pop of speargun bands slinging the shaft- the uku’s death knell. Derek was using his modicum of meteorological knowledge (limited mostly to haphazard observations followed by inane speculation) to forecast the next day’s dive conditions, but the sight of Bruce dispatching the uku prompts recollections of his own uku encounter.
From the surface, the sea floor eighty-five feet below was clearly visible. The water was clean off much of the southeast coast; Derek and Kurt knew because they were busy drifting past it in the current. A high tide winds the current up like a toy car, letting it go on the tide shift and turning the waters just offshore into an HOV lane. But the wind was moderate and the divers were able to drift alongside their kayak, straying on brief forays then scurrying to catch up, like a dog following its master.
A few fish already adorned Derek’s kui. Two moana kali, defying nature’s laws by becoming even more beautiful after death, glowed pink furthest down the line. They had been speared earlier around boulder patches before the current picked up. More recently a small uku was added. Like an armoire collector on Antique Roadshow, the uku had been thoroughly inspecting Kurt’s flasher. As Derek approached, the uku wafted away, but not fast enough, and nowhere near far enough. At 100 feet Derek caught up to the uku and fired his spear into it. Down but not out, the uku ran line off Derek’s Marc Valentin reel. But its efforts would succeed only in delaying its ultimate demise.
Now Derek was dropping through the blue water, rays of sunlight giving way to an unfolding deep blue expanse as he descended toward a boulder patch, serving as a mall for reef fish, a food court for a spearfisherman. Behind a ridge he took up residence, peering over its top while keeping most of his body hidden from view. Mamo fluttered atop coral heads in small groups, and a few hinalea loped along. A sandbar shark, a species whose hunched back looks in need of a chiropractor, slid in from the side then took off after getting a look. A minute and a half after Derek left the surface a pot-bellied uku suddenly appeared, surveying the reef from a slight elevation. Derek relaxed, melted his green and yellow wetsuit into the ridge’s algae as much as possible, but knew time was expiring. Noticing that it had halted its approach, Derek crept toward the big, silvery slab.
Life is good for a big uku. Unlike a law firm or internet chatroom, Oahu’s reefs are not thick with predators. An 18-pound uku is pretty much Chairman of the Board. If there was a movie about reefs around Oahu, The Rock would play the big uku.
However, word had passed from coral head to coral head that already today two ukus were impaled and dragged to the surface where they met their end- the work of divers. The big, silver uku contemplated this horror as a diver, camoflauged in purple and gray, drifted by on the surface eighty feet above. Years ago, when he lived at the rock outcropping by the sand pit on the shallow reef, a diver had fluttered towards him, a terrifying sight, cheeks puffed out, eyes bulging, then lunged forward and shot a spear, nicking his tail fin and drilling into the reef with an explosion of coralline algae shrapnel. Replaying it now in his primitive mind caused stifling apprehension, unnatural of a big uku. These very feelings gave rise to irritation, a disposition more fitting of a beast with such a toothy snarl. He recalled that his pet sea slug, Sylvester, was mortally wounded in the ordeal. He felt a tinge of anger.
After all, he’s the most efficient and genetically gifted predator on this reef. These days his gonads alone weigh as much as he did in his entirety the day of his near-death experience early in life. Now he has fangs, big ones, like some kind of nasty mamba from the Serengeti. Now he has a belly that can hold four shrimp, three nehu, a hinalea, and a baby uhu; he knows, he tried it last spring. Now he can swim faster, bite harder. Now he’s bad, and this is his domain. The strong current swept that diver past already, why should he worry about that? An uku of his caliber shouldn’t concern himself with anything more than hunting down a meal. Speaking of which, just exactly what is that he sees behind that ridge?
The uku was, indeed, safe from Kurt, the diver who already drifted by eighty feet overhead. Safe for the time being that is, as Kurt is fond of turning the predator into his prey. No uku larger than five pounds is ever really safe from Kurt Chambers, a lesson learned the hard way earlier in the day by a seven-pound specimen. Now Kurt, comfortable in this realm and keen to produce more meat for dinner, scanned his surroundings for a sign of a respectable fish. Behind him Derek burst to the surface and bellowed, “I think I’m gonna need some help!” Kurt wheeled to offer his assistance.
Derek elucidated the problem. “Gut shot on a big uku. My line feels slack and there’s a shark down there, so I don’t know…”
“Hold on, don’t pressure it,” Kurt counseled, following Derek’s snaking reel line first with his eyes, then with his fins. On the bottom Kurt found an 18-pound uku, its side a gaping wound expanding with every thrash against the spear. Its vigorous struggles gained it no ground, as the reel line had snagged a nub of coral. Kurt bounded forward, his left arm a pogo stick hopping across the bottom as his right hand extended and he took aim. All hope for escape was vanquished with a slight flex of Kurt’s trigger finger.
The narration of his favorite video brings Derek back to the present. “Bruce notices a flash in the distance,” announces the narrator in his deep, stoic voice. Distance closes between Bruce and the uku. Tired from a day of diving, Derek closes his eyes now, but he can envision the scene. Bruce glides deeper as the uku swaggers closer. The uku’s perpetual search for food will soon land him on the dinner plate, an irony that briefly plays in Derek’s mind, but then he’s asleep. The uku is no longer pixels on the screen; it’s right in front of him now. A familiar sight, though he would have to get used to the feeling of diving with these cotton socks and black ponytail.
Fall Shootout 2006
Fall Shootout 2006
I lost the first spearfishing tournament I entered. I don’t mean that I just didn’t win, but I got dead last place. I either finished by weighing in zero fish, or was disqualified for bringing in one that was undersized; I’m not real sure how that was officially scored.
The Fall Shootout begins at a little restaurant in Kailua called Pinky’s. At 8:00 AM one hundred divers (fifty teams of two) are unleashed to shore dive where they please along some fifteen miles of Oahu’s windward coast, as long as they are back by 1:00 PM. Some divers are already dressed in wetsuits by the time the floodgates are opened at 8. Others have parked their cars strategically around Pinky’s in order to avoid the traffic jam and get to their spot first. Miraculously, everyone exhibited patience exiting the parking lot, or at least the two cars I cut off and the one I swerved around didn’t seem to get too bent out of shape.
Kurt Chambers and I began mapping our road to victory a couple months prior to the tournament, pouring over aerial photos and nautical charts like we were planning a war. After a few fruitless scouting forays we hit the proverbial rock bottom, which in our case was a slimy sand substrate about a mile off Ka’a’awa at a drop-off I discovered on an aerial photo. I must have been victimized by camera tricks, because what we ultimately found was a slope from a 60 foot rubble flat to a sand bottom at around 75 feet. We decided to quit wasting time scouting and just dive our familiar grounds at Rabbit Island.
We knew we could outswim the other teams and get the first crack at the fish we hoped would be out there. Even at the time we knew that wasn’t a guaranteed recipe for success, but we didn’t know of any ulua holes so we threw our chips down on hoping fish would be back there and rolled the dice. We had seen plenty of fish behind the island before, and Kurt had even broken up a party at an omilu house that spring and came away with a fifteen-pounder. So even though scouting didn’t pan out, we weren’t totally screwed.
Quite the contrary. In fact, half our plan did, indeed, come to fruition. When we arrived at Makai Pier, the beach facing Rabbit Island, there were at least two other teams already there. But we suited up quickly, attached everything to the buoy, leaving our hands free to speedily stroke the mile out to the island. I believe it took around 40 minutes to get out there, but the important thing is it took the other teams over an hour. We would be able to hit the ridge on the island’s northwest side first, maybe picking up an uhu (there was a prize for smallest uhu over 18 inches). We would be the first to ambush the mu pile by the big boulders half way around the island. We would get to check the omilu house around the back before anyone else and spear any other game lurking back there. But it turned out we were just first to see nothing was home.
I did end up shooting a nice kala pretty quickly, so at least I was on the board. But each team could only weigh two fish. So a four-pound kala was pretty useless without something meaty: an ulua patrolling the deep reef, a lurking uku, maybe even the rare, but not unprecedented, appearance of an awa in the surge. So I strung up the kala and looked for a real prize. I swam to the omilu house, but no one was home. There’s a spot Kurt and I know where more often than not you will get at least one chance at a decent fish- an uku probably, maybe a kahala, but it’s been a kagami before, even an ono. I didn’t know where the fish were this day though. At this point I didn’t really even know where Kurt was.
For a while I thought I was keeping him off to my left and a little behind me. But I eventually realized another team that finally made it to the island owned the buoy I had been tracking. I rode the surge of a swell up the cliff face of the island and grabbed onto a little ledge to look for Kurt. Already occupying the ledge was a sea urchin, who didn’t want to share his perch, but gladly gave the tips of his spines to my fingers. I let go and decided to ride the swell round-trip a couple times, kicking madly and swiveling my head at maximum elevation, but never saw Kurt. I don’t really know what he was doing all this time, although I would later find out what he wasn’t doing: catching fish.
Instead of spending more time looking for Kurt, I worked the nearby pile of mu, a fish that can get a bit hefty and is one of the more respectable species a diver could turn in. I ended up picking up a small one, the young fish’s curiosity, like that of an innocent puppy, resulting in his demise when he rounded the boulder to investigate the disturbance (it was me, with a speargun… surprise!). Like I said, a small one, three pounds, useless for the tournament, but it would be good to steam. Later, I knocked down a fair-sized red, hoping to take honors with the smallest uhu. When we finally crossed paths, I saw Kurt had gotten one just a little larger than mine. He had also picked up a papio.
We expended every last second we were allotted, but alas, we came up empty. We raced back to Pinky’s, the last pair to check-in I think, and turned in our uhus somewhere around 12:59:48. Lance Ohara was measuring fish. He slapped mine down by the ruler. “Too short.” Quickly he slid my 17 inch uhu off into a cooler, replacing it with Kurt’s. “Too short,” and only seconds after handing in our uhus, the last of our hopes vanished as the cooler closed on our fish, too short to be considered for the award of smallest.
To win a tournament like this it is almost imperative to bring back an ulua. Uluas win these tournaments for the same reason Billy Madison won at dodgeball: they are in a size-class above the rest. As I recall, in this particular year, 2006, only two uluas were turned in, both by one team- the winning team of Vernon Takata and Shawn Fujimoto. I saw some other impressive fish: a fantail with scales the size of Santita’s corn chips and a grill-top sized kala that I remember got an extra look from Kurt (times have changed) among others.
Kurt and I both admitted we got it handed to us that day. Still, it was interesting to me that 100 guys could go out, many of them to grounds they’ve grown up diving, and fail to bring back many real monsters. This was an even more prominent theme in the next tournament I would attend, the 2007 Gene Higa Memorial, in which no uluas or ukus were caught. In the Fall Shootout, Dave Sakoda, at that time the best diver I had ever dove with (quite possibly still the most lethal diver I have dove with), caught little more than Kurt or me. Spearfishing is just so hard to begin with, but when you have to count on catching two of your best fish of the year in a few hours some specified morning… Well, I’m literally the last person who knows anything about that.
I lost the first spearfishing tournament I entered. I don’t mean that I just didn’t win, but I got dead last place. I either finished by weighing in zero fish, or was disqualified for bringing in one that was undersized; I’m not real sure how that was officially scored.
The Fall Shootout begins at a little restaurant in Kailua called Pinky’s. At 8:00 AM one hundred divers (fifty teams of two) are unleashed to shore dive where they please along some fifteen miles of Oahu’s windward coast, as long as they are back by 1:00 PM. Some divers are already dressed in wetsuits by the time the floodgates are opened at 8. Others have parked their cars strategically around Pinky’s in order to avoid the traffic jam and get to their spot first. Miraculously, everyone exhibited patience exiting the parking lot, or at least the two cars I cut off and the one I swerved around didn’t seem to get too bent out of shape.
Kurt Chambers and I began mapping our road to victory a couple months prior to the tournament, pouring over aerial photos and nautical charts like we were planning a war. After a few fruitless scouting forays we hit the proverbial rock bottom, which in our case was a slimy sand substrate about a mile off Ka’a’awa at a drop-off I discovered on an aerial photo. I must have been victimized by camera tricks, because what we ultimately found was a slope from a 60 foot rubble flat to a sand bottom at around 75 feet. We decided to quit wasting time scouting and just dive our familiar grounds at Rabbit Island.
We knew we could outswim the other teams and get the first crack at the fish we hoped would be out there. Even at the time we knew that wasn’t a guaranteed recipe for success, but we didn’t know of any ulua holes so we threw our chips down on hoping fish would be back there and rolled the dice. We had seen plenty of fish behind the island before, and Kurt had even broken up a party at an omilu house that spring and came away with a fifteen-pounder. So even though scouting didn’t pan out, we weren’t totally screwed.
Quite the contrary. In fact, half our plan did, indeed, come to fruition. When we arrived at Makai Pier, the beach facing Rabbit Island, there were at least two other teams already there. But we suited up quickly, attached everything to the buoy, leaving our hands free to speedily stroke the mile out to the island. I believe it took around 40 minutes to get out there, but the important thing is it took the other teams over an hour. We would be able to hit the ridge on the island’s northwest side first, maybe picking up an uhu (there was a prize for smallest uhu over 18 inches). We would be the first to ambush the mu pile by the big boulders half way around the island. We would get to check the omilu house around the back before anyone else and spear any other game lurking back there. But it turned out we were just first to see nothing was home.
I did end up shooting a nice kala pretty quickly, so at least I was on the board. But each team could only weigh two fish. So a four-pound kala was pretty useless without something meaty: an ulua patrolling the deep reef, a lurking uku, maybe even the rare, but not unprecedented, appearance of an awa in the surge. So I strung up the kala and looked for a real prize. I swam to the omilu house, but no one was home. There’s a spot Kurt and I know where more often than not you will get at least one chance at a decent fish- an uku probably, maybe a kahala, but it’s been a kagami before, even an ono. I didn’t know where the fish were this day though. At this point I didn’t really even know where Kurt was.
For a while I thought I was keeping him off to my left and a little behind me. But I eventually realized another team that finally made it to the island owned the buoy I had been tracking. I rode the surge of a swell up the cliff face of the island and grabbed onto a little ledge to look for Kurt. Already occupying the ledge was a sea urchin, who didn’t want to share his perch, but gladly gave the tips of his spines to my fingers. I let go and decided to ride the swell round-trip a couple times, kicking madly and swiveling my head at maximum elevation, but never saw Kurt. I don’t really know what he was doing all this time, although I would later find out what he wasn’t doing: catching fish.
Instead of spending more time looking for Kurt, I worked the nearby pile of mu, a fish that can get a bit hefty and is one of the more respectable species a diver could turn in. I ended up picking up a small one, the young fish’s curiosity, like that of an innocent puppy, resulting in his demise when he rounded the boulder to investigate the disturbance (it was me, with a speargun… surprise!). Like I said, a small one, three pounds, useless for the tournament, but it would be good to steam. Later, I knocked down a fair-sized red, hoping to take honors with the smallest uhu. When we finally crossed paths, I saw Kurt had gotten one just a little larger than mine. He had also picked up a papio.
We expended every last second we were allotted, but alas, we came up empty. We raced back to Pinky’s, the last pair to check-in I think, and turned in our uhus somewhere around 12:59:48. Lance Ohara was measuring fish. He slapped mine down by the ruler. “Too short.” Quickly he slid my 17 inch uhu off into a cooler, replacing it with Kurt’s. “Too short,” and only seconds after handing in our uhus, the last of our hopes vanished as the cooler closed on our fish, too short to be considered for the award of smallest.
To win a tournament like this it is almost imperative to bring back an ulua. Uluas win these tournaments for the same reason Billy Madison won at dodgeball: they are in a size-class above the rest. As I recall, in this particular year, 2006, only two uluas were turned in, both by one team- the winning team of Vernon Takata and Shawn Fujimoto. I saw some other impressive fish: a fantail with scales the size of Santita’s corn chips and a grill-top sized kala that I remember got an extra look from Kurt (times have changed) among others.
Kurt and I both admitted we got it handed to us that day. Still, it was interesting to me that 100 guys could go out, many of them to grounds they’ve grown up diving, and fail to bring back many real monsters. This was an even more prominent theme in the next tournament I would attend, the 2007 Gene Higa Memorial, in which no uluas or ukus were caught. In the Fall Shootout, Dave Sakoda, at that time the best diver I had ever dove with (quite possibly still the most lethal diver I have dove with), caught little more than Kurt or me. Spearfishing is just so hard to begin with, but when you have to count on catching two of your best fish of the year in a few hours some specified morning… Well, I’m literally the last person who knows anything about that.
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