I fish slower than most guides recommend, and almost all of my bites come on the downwind pass. Here is the zone system I use, including the exact speeds and the two-mile radius rule that keeps me in the fish.
I spend two to three days before every trip calling my network, logging positions, and picking a zone. The intel you gather before you leave the dock is what separates a consistent fisherman from someone who just goes looking.
My actual drag numbers for ahi, how I handle the boat after the bite, and why I tell my gaff man to aim for the pec fin instead of the head. This is the part of ahi fishing nobody writes down.
The exact lures I ran on our last ahi trips and why each one went out: how I match my line count to my crew, pick colors off the week's reports, and read the teeth marks an ahi leaves on a lure head.
These are the exact skirt combinations we run on our ahi lures, with the Yamashita and Yo-Zuri codes for each one. I also cover the two skirt shortcuts and the rigging catch you need to know before you run a flashabou skirt.
Most of the fish we find offshore in Hawaii, we find because of birds. This is how I tell the flutter birds from the boss birds, which piles are worth working, and when to leave a pile alone.
Every boat bites differently. Here is my baseline spread, 320 feet on the riggers and 200 on the corners, and how I compress or stretch it depending on where the ahi bites come.
Ahi don't behave the same way year-round. Water temperature, bait migration, and current patterns all affect what's working on any given day. Here's what we've learned about matching lures to conditions in Hawaiian waters.
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