Around here we call it mowing the lawn. You pick a zone, work it back and forth like you are cutting grass, and stay in it until you get your bite or run out of time. If you are trying to catch your first ahi or get consistent, learn this concept first.
Ahi fishing is a needle in a haystack game. The fish are not going to bite all day. Most times the major bites happen early in the morning and around the tide changes. If you are not in the zone where the fish are congregated when that window opens, you are out of the game.
When we were starting out we did what most guys do. We would hear the ahi were biting on the west side, launch out of a packed harbor, run to the pinnacle, see no boats and no fish, then hear somebody caught at one buoy and drive all the way across. Nothing there. Back across to the other side, and now it is late afternoon with an 18 to 20 mile run home and no ahi in the boat. Then we would find out the spot we left fired four hours after we gave up on it. All that driving is traveling time, not fishing time. You can catch a fish that way, but it is a chance encounter, not consistency.
The intel I get from friends normally comes in miles and degrees, something like 330 degrees at 10 miles. When I get numbers like that, or when I see one or two boats hooked up in an area, I put a mark on the GPS right there, a waypoint or a man overboard mark, and I label it.
That mark is the center of my playing field, and I work a 2 mile radius around it. Chasing a bird pile I might stretch it to 3 miles, but no more, because if I am 3 miles out on one side and the ahi show up on the other side of the mark, that is a 6 mile gap between me and the fish. If a good pile leads me to the edge, I leave it and come back in.
I start at the top of the zone and work the boat down sea at 4.5 to 6 knots, making long S turns so I cover a longer track. At the bottom I point the boat straight back up sea and run at 8.5 to 9 knots. The up sea leg is not fishing. I am just getting back to the start of my next pass.
There is a reason for that split. Going up sea the boat is jerking, the engines are working hard, and the lures are not swimming right in all that spray. Down sea with the boat slowed down, the white water is cleaner and the fish can see the spread better. The swell helps you too. The wave pushes the boat, the lures skate forward a little faster, then slow down, so you get a pull and drop action, almost like jigging, without doing anything. For us, 70 to 80 percent of the bites come on the down sea run. How I set the lures behind the boat is its own subject, and I covered it in my post on adjusting your spread.
One day we fished a six mile stretch between two buoys, going back and forth the whole way because guys had caught fish at both ends. Not a wrong play, but not the best one. A zone that big has pockets, and every long pass through the dead water between them is 45 minutes you could have spent over the fish.
So here is the rule. With no signs, my lawn can be miles long. The moment I see signs, another boat hooked up, a bite on my own gear, fish showing on the surface, I shrink the lawn to 2 or 3 football fields and mow that small patch, in and out, up and down, until I have worked it well enough. If it goes quiet I open back up and hunt, and the next sign shrinks it again. The guys who catch multiple fish stay in the tight area the longest.
Watch the other boats. A boat stopped and fighting is normally an ahi. A boat moving while fighting is more likely a marlin. When I see a stopped boat put a fish in the box, that is a mark on my GPS.
The birds tell you what kind of pile you have too. An aku pile tends to keep moving through with the current, and chasing it pulls you out of your zone. An ahi pile is different. The birds pop up, sit down, pop up again close by, and keep working the same general area. I went deeper on this in my post on reading birds to find fish.
If the zone is crowded, I do not fight into the middle of the fleet. I work the outskirts and stay patient. Most guys leave after a few hours without a bite, and every boat that leaves gives me more room. One of the old timers who taught me put it this way. Ahi fishing is like waiting in line at the manapua store. Take your ticket and wait for your number to get called. Stay in line and you get your manapua. Leave and you do not.
I have sat in a zone that looked dead, flat calm, no birds, from early morning until 3:30 in the afternoon, because ahi had been there for days and I had marked bait. On the last down sea run the rigger came down and we put our ahi in the boat, while most of the fleet that ran off caught aku.
That is mowing the lawn. Pick your field, run it down sea, shrink it when you see signs, and wait your turn.
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I use two different skirting techniques depending on the material because thick and thin skirts behave differently at the fold point. In this post I cover the ring trim technique for thick skirts, why I use coconut oil as a lubricant, and the front skirt positioning that keeps both layers opening correctly.
The calendar says ahi season in Hawaii starts in June, but the last few years the fish have been showing up as early as January and March. Here is how I get the boat, the leaders, and the lure box ready before they arrive.
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