After a few hard days of fishing in the southern porpoise school, we were given some inside scoop about the northern pile holding a lot of fish. Though we had the next day off from charter fishing, myself, Tracy my mate and a good friend and deck hand on the Huntress Mitch, loaded up the Northern Lights for commercial day of tuna fishing. We headed north early in the morning in search of the North porpoise school. On the way up to the zone where the school had been hanging out we came across two striped marlin tailing along the surface. We made a few passes around the stripes but they wanted nothing to do with our lures. We continued on our way but not before spotting a blue marlin floating on the top. It is pretty unusual in Kona to see blues or any other type of billfish on the surface. We drug our lure pattern right by the floating blue but she too wanted nothing to do with us and sunk out quickly as we came by.
Staying on course we made our way to the area where we figured the school might be. I spotted a huge pile of shear water birds and as we made our way closer we could see the porpoise school underneath the birds. We were hoping for a first pass strike trolling but the school we had found wasn’t holding any tuna underneath. Another school of porpoise was making its way north with a few other charter boats already in it. As the schools neared closer we could see tuna busting out in front of the on coming school. Tracy and Mitch quickly got the lures out of the water and within minutes we had the tuna stick out and a perfect pass lined up. As soon as we came across the head of the school we were bit. Mitch took the rod to the chair and dusted of the first tuna in minutes. With one in the boat the pressure was off but the boys hurried to get us set back up. There was already 6 boats in the school along with 3 other tuna sticks in use. The tuna were pushing bait way in the front of the school and the porpoise were moving really fast. Most boats couldn’t keep up with the pile but we were able to set out right into another perfect pass. Tuna were busting all over the front and minutes later we were bit again. The first fish was 120 pounder but the next one was close to 180. With two ahi in the box we were feeling great but the boys hussled and we were able to set out and get good position to catch 4 more within an hour of the first strike. The fourth fish was by far the biggest though at the time we weren’t sure just how big. With the box full and the fish bag stuffed with close to a thousand pounds of ahi we decided to head in. By 1:00 we had caught 6 big yellow fin one of them topping the scale at 207 and a half pounds taking back the biggest of the year spot. A day to remember with just the boys.