Category: Hawaii

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Hawaii Packing List, Part Elua

We went to Hawaii two years ago and didn’t catch a fish, so this is my second Hawaiian packing list. This trip was different enough that it’s worth the effort.

Gear

We took 9 weight rods again, with big Orvis and Tibor saltwater reels. This is heavy-weight stuff–we normally use 8 weights (which are considered heavy); this was heavier, but when the first bonefish ran I was scared that the 9-weights were too light. They weren’t, but I wouldn’t have minded a 10-weight.

In addition to the bonefish, I saw three giant trevally, and with only the 9-weight, I was kinda glad they ignored my flies. The 9-weight really isn’t enough for giant trevally.

Our flies were weighted–they weren’t just a hook and fur and feathers. They had barbell eyes so that the flies sank as soon as they hit the water. Barbell eyes are also a spur to better casting, because they hurt more when you blow it and the fly whacks the back of the head. The first day I fished with weighted EP mantis shrimp. I lost both heavy shrimp flies I’d brought, and the second day fished with a similar fly donated by our guide, Joe Kalima.

EP mantis shrimp

Joe wanted us to use 30 pound leaders to tie the fly to the line, which is crazy heavy, but maybe he wanted the heavy line because it’s harder to lose in the coral. Because of leader breaks I lost enough fish the first day that the second I used one of his. On Kauai we went back to 16 pounds.

The Molokai Ferry

There used to be an inter-island ferry from Maui to Moloka’i, but it seems to have shut down in 2016 (though there’s still a website). Now you have to take a plane or drive, and driving between islands really doesn’t work that well.

There’s something about flying on a pond hopper that makes every adventure better, even if the flight itself isn’t really adventurous. It sure feels adventurous when I walk across the tarmac to that bit of a plane. When I get on a pond hopper, I know I’m heading someplace out of my ken.

Traveling between three islands we took a lot of planes, so I likely raised the earth’s temperature a couple of degrees. Sorry. We flew to Honolulu on Delta, took the Mokulele Airlines flight to Moloka’i the next morning, flew back from Moloka’i to Honolulu a few days later, and then immediately flew Southwest from Honolulu to Kaua’i. We flew back to Houston direct from Kaua’i. The only flight we couldn’t cover with mileage points was the flight on Mokulele Airlines, and it wasn’t cheap, maybe $300 by the time we paid added luggage fees. That’s about $10 per minute for the flight.

There was no in-flight meal, but there was a black lab puppy.

Hotels

We spent the first night in Honolulu at the Equus Hotel. On our trip to Honolulu two years ago, we rented an AirBnB for three nights, and spent our last night in a dank dark motel near the airport. I wouldn’t stay near the airport again. The Equus is a bit off of the Waikiki strip, and it’s a $40 cab ride from the airport, but it’s also well priced (for Honolulu). Our room was small and the hotel needs another elevator, but I’d stay there again.

Because we had to fly out early the next morning, we paid the extra $15 per person for the hotel breakfast. I assumed it would be the typical hotel buffet, but instead the Hungarian barmaid at the Paniolo Grill made us bagels and lox. It was lovely, and she gave us her recipe for pickled red onions.

On Molokai, we stayed at the Hotel Molokai. There wasn’t any real choice for hotels on the island, and I’d guess the Hotel Molokai was built in the 60s. The rooms are scattered about the grounds in separate clusters, which gives it a nice open feel. The rooms and grounds are well-maintained, the staff was helpful, and the island’s best restaurant and bar are at the hotel. Internet service kinda sucks, but every room comes with its own rooster.

North Kauai seems to specialize in family condo vacations near a golf course. We stayed at The Westin Princeville Ocean Resort Villas. It was fine, and on a beautiful part of the island, but there were no chickens.

Food

On Kauai, we went to a luau. Tourist luaus are commoditized Hawaiian traditions, but how do you go to Hawaii without sooner or later going to a luau? The mai tais were good, there was a pineapple appetizer, and the poi was surprisingly purple. The music and dancing reminded me of a Ballet Folklorico, or that evening in Spain when we went to see flamenco, or in Lisbon when we went to see fado. The performers took pains to educate the audience, and there was a Tahitian fire dancer. I think it’s Hawaiian law that you can’t have a luau without a Tahitian fire dancer.

On Moloka’i, we ate dinner every night at Hiro’s Ohani Grill at the Hotel Moloka’i. Just like the hotel choices, there aren’t a lot of restaurant choices on Molokai, and the grill had excellent poke, the bar had martinis, and the tables were on a veranda that overlooked the Pacific. There were table cloths. The last night the sun was setting and I thought, “they’ve done a really good job copying a tropical bar,” and then realized it was a tropical bar.

There is a national park on Moloka’i, Kalaupapa National Historical Park. Beginning in the 1860s, about 8,000 Hawaiian lepers were exiled to the Kalaupapa Peninsula. It was an active leper colony until sulfa drugs were available to control leprosy, and there’s still a remnant resident population. Ironically, the peninsula is currently closed to tourists because of Covid. There’s an overlook though, on the cliffs a couple of thousand feet above the peninsula, and on the walk back we talked to a lovely woman who had retired to Molokai from Eugene, Oregon. She was originally from Lake Charles, Louisiana, about 90 miles from Houston. I told her that I had tried the saimin–the Hawaiian version of Japanese noodle soup–at the Ohani Grill, and that it was bland and that I had to ask for hot sauce. The Louisianan in her came to the fore and she said that a lot of Hawaiian food needs hot sauce. She was pretty much right.

When we were planning, I found an internet post on where to eat in Hawaii, and on Kaua’i we followed its recommendations. We ate at Hamura Saimin, which is a working folks soup joint in a warehouse district. It was better saimin than on Moloka’i, and there was sriracha on the table. There weren’t any table cloths though.

The luau was at the Tahiti Nui, a restaurant and bar in Princeville near where we stayed at the Westin Villas. Our first night on Kauai we also ate there, when there was no luau and it was only open as a restaurant. Like the Ohani Grill on Moloka’i, the Tahiti Nui did a good job mimicking a tropical bar by being one, and to celebrate its authenticity we drank mai tais. They didn’t have little umbrellas.

Where We Didn’t Go.

We fished on Moloka’i’s coral reef, but didn’t snorkle. We never saw Moloka’i’s southern beaches, and we couldn’t go to the the Kalaupapa Peninsula. I would like to, and I’d like to visit the Catholic chapel dedicated to Saint Damien of Moloka’i. Damien was a saint in anybody’s book, and I should have stopped at the chapel, at least to pay my respects.

We didn’t visit Mau’i, or the Big Island, or The Four Seasons Resort on Lana’i (though at $1500 a night, it’s out of my price range).

We haven’t eaten at Helena’s or Ahi Assassin in Honolulu. I keep missing Helena’s, and I suspect it’s a real failure on my part.

Covid

You can’t travel to Hawaii without parsing through its Covid regulations. Unless you plan on a 14-day quarantine, you can’t enter the state from the mainland without either proof of vaccination or a negative test within two days of entry. Those are the liberalized rules as of November. Before November there was no entry, vaccinated or unvaccinated, without a negative test. Before testing, the state effectively shut down outside travel. Testing requirements are still in effect for foreign travelers, but those are federal rules for foreign entry to any state.

You can’t enter buildings in Hawaii without a mask, and most people are wearing masks on the street. The grocery store on Moloka’i would only allow one family member inside at a time. Kris guessed that was enforceable because everyone knows everyone else’s family on Moloka’i.

Meanwhile every place was packed. The plane from Houston to LA was packed. The LA airport was packed. The plane from LA to Honolulu was packed. The plane from Honolulu to Molokai was packed (though since it only carried 12 of us, that’s relative). Restaurants were packed. Given the spike in infections, it was nuts. Everybody should have cleared out for us.

You can’t travel in crowds without exposure, and I’m sure we were exposed. We tested negative before we left and we tested negative when we got home. We’re vaccinated, boosted, and we wore masks, but we were lucky.

Once you’re in Hawaii, you can fly from island to island without additional documentation. Returning to the mainland doesn’t require documentation either.

Music

A lot of stuff in Hawaii has to be imported: most of the food, building materials, cars, gasoline, tourists . . . For that matter most residents are imported.

Music is an exception, and Hawaiian music is everywhere, all the time. When you unload from your arrival plane, there’s Hawaiian music playing in the airport. When you get to your departure gate there’s Hawaiian music playing in the airport. At restaurants there will be Hawaiian musicians, really good musicians. When we got into our rental car in Moloka’i, the radio was tuned to a Hawaiian music station.

Michael Keale, Tahiti Nui

If you think about what Hawaiians gave us musically, the steel-stringed guitar, the ukulele, the slack-key guitar . . . If you think about their lovely vocals and gracious melodies . . . Ok, ok, it can get cloying after a while, but then I find Jimi Hendrix cloying. I’m fairly easily cloyed.

But any guitarist has to be fascinated by Hawaiian slack-key guitar tunings. Ry Cooder is the most famous mainland student of slack-key, and Gabby Pahinui and Keola Beamer are famous Hawaiian players. Meanwhile I found this YouTube recording of Chet Atkins playing slack-key, and making it sound a good bit like Delta Country Blues, which is a pretty peculiar bit of cultural fusion. It’s great stuff, but it would have been perfect if he’d been playing a sitar.

Guitar

I took my old Kohno, and sat on the veranda at the Hotel Molokai and played to the chickens. I don’t remember what I played, but it wasn’t Hawaiian. The chickens didn’t seem to mind.

William Brigham photographer, 1889, Saint Damian of Moloka’i, shortly before his death.
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Moloka’i and Kaua’i Bonefish, January 8-11, 2022

Our guide in Kaua’i, Rob Arita, said that he thought Moloka’i is the best bonefishing in the world.

That’s a surprising statement, especially about Hawaii, especially about a place as relatively obscure as Moloka’i. Usually descriptions of Hawaiian bonefishing tend more towards it’s interesting, not that it’s great. I’m not a good judge. I’ve fished for bonefish some, once on Oahu when I didn’t catch fish, and a couple of times each in Belize and the Florida Keys. I caught a pretty good fish in the Keys and a lot of smaller fish in Belize, but that’s it. I haven’t been to Venezuela or the Bahamas or to Christmas Island or any of the other numerous places where the bonefishing is famous. Hawaiian bonefishing is not famous, and is usually mentioned as an afterthought.

Outside of the islands, Moloka’i is mostly famous for its historic leper colony.

Here’s what I can tell you about fishing on Moloka’i. Over two days I had at least 30 legitimate shots at bonefish, scared off some fish by hitting them on the head with the fly, had a bunch of follows with no takes, and had a dozen takes when I either failed to set the hook or lost the fish during its run. I landed two fish, one about six pounds and one close to 10 pounds. Ok, ok, I’m a fisherman. It was absolutely 10 pounds, and it’s getting closer and closer to 11. That’s a lifetime bonefish, and that’s an extraordinary bonefish trip, anywhere.

Back to Rob and Kaua’i. I haven’t been to Maui or Hawaii Island, but it would be hard to find a place prettier than Kaua’i. Kaua’i was the setting for the movie South Pacific, which is all us folk of a certain age need to know. The song “Bali Ha’i,” by the way, is the worst earworm ever. Kaua’i is pretty developed now, with a surfeit of golf courses and condos–it tends towards a Florida beach resort–and the island Bali Ha’i in the movie is motion picture trickery–there’s no such place across a tranquil bay from Kaua’i–but Kaua’i is gorgeous, and it’s famous for producing championship surfers. We couldn’t fish where Rob wanted to fish on Kaua’i’s north side because of 40-foot swells. I bet it was great surfing.

We fished the east side in the surf, which had two- or three-foot breakers. No one was surfing.

I like the notion of fishing the surf, and I’ve had some pretty good days in the Texas surf, but I’m not sure I like the reality as much as the notion. On our day fishing, I blind-cast hard until my arm fell off, saw one bonefish (well, ok, Rob saw one bonefish), may have missed one take by a fish, stayed colder than I wanted, and got slapped around by the breakers. I’m not usually much of a cursing man, but at one point I was so sick of getting hit by breakers that I would face each new wave and tell it to fuck off. None of them did, but it made me feel better.

You can’t judge Kaua’i fishing by our bad day. Sometimes there are just bad days to fish, and that’s what we hit. There was nothing Rob could do, there was nothing we could do. We fished, and then I was kinda glad it was over and went and had a mai tai. I’d fish with Rob again in a heartbeat.

By coincidence, it turned out that Rob also partnered with our Moloka’i guide, Joe Kalima, to guide from time to time on Moloka’i, and the best part of our day was talking to Rob about Joe and fishing on Moloka’i. Rob showed us pictures of his 15 pound Moloka’i bonefish. He said that he thought Moloka’i was the best bonefishing in the world. Did I mention that? I can’t tell you what an extraordinary statement that is. Saying that Moloka’i is the best bonefishing in the world is like saying that Houston is a great walkable city. In our neighborhood that’s pretty much true, but it violates most people’s notions.

I may not be a competent judge of Rob’s statement, but I’ve fished with a lot of guides in a lot of places, and I will say that Joe Kalima is about as fun to fish with as it gets, not least because he brings his dachshunds on the boat. Saltwater fly fishing usually consists of one angler fishing, while the other helps spot fish. Fishing with Joe consists as often as not of one angler fishing, while the other sneaks off to scratch Boo-Boo the dachshund’s head. It makes for a very satisfactory day.

I suspect Joe guides fly fishers because he already knew the fish, Not because he knew fly fishing. He’s all you could ask in a guide though. Joe sees fish and he calls the shot. He can tell you how to land the fish. He’s funny. And, as they say in East Texas, he knows everybody on the island and the names of their dogs. He’s got great stories.

Getting to Moloka’i isn’t easy. Unlike Maui or Oahu where you can fly direct from the West Coast, you have to take a commuter flight to Moloka’i from Oahu or Maui. I’m not sure that everyone is happy you’re there, either. Plenty of the islanders have signs in the yard telling tourists to go home, though some temper the message by suggesting you spend your money and then go home (which frankly I pretty much agree with). I don’t remember why I picked it as a destination, but I’d read somewhere that Moloka’i is more like the Hawaii of 50 years ago than anyplace else in the islands.

Moloka’i has fewer than 7500 inhabitants, and when we picked up our rental and started driving down the island (I had also read, by the way, that Jeeps are recommended), my first impression was that it was exactly like Lockett, Texas. Yeah, it was set in the Pacific. Yeah, it’s arguably prettier than Lockett, the fishing is certainly better, and there are apparently even more of Joe Kalima’s friends and relations on Moloka’i than there are Streits in Lockett, but it shares the feel of any other relatively isolated, moderately self-contained country place. It has the kind of grocery store where any country people from the contiguous states would feel right at home. People may not always be happy, and sometimes it’s likely that getting by is hard, but the best of the people really are always the best.

Rob told a story about Joe, about how Joe didn’t have an ID for years, because Joe said that whoever might stop him on the island was likely his nephew anyway. That’s Lockett, Texas.

The only way to Moloka’i from Honolulu are 12-seater commuter flights on Mokulele Air. It’s worth getting to Moloka’i though. Did I mention that I think Moloka’i has the best bonefishing in the world, and that I caught an 11-pound bonefish?

* * * * * *

Here’s how I lost fish on Moloka’i:

  • I lost two fish when my leader broke. The leader is the size-graduated bits and pieces of nylon knotted to the end of the fly line to attach the fly. I don’t know why it broke. Maybe it was cut on coral, maybe it was nicked or had a wind knot. It couldn’t have been that my knots failed. My knots never fail.
  • I lost one fish because my knot failed. When you fly fish, all the beauty is in the casting, all the work is in dutifully retrieving the line from your beautiful cast. I hold the rod with my right hand, and retrieve and set the hook with my left. By the time a fish takes, I may have 20 or more feet of line puddled at my feet. For most fish, that’s no big shakes, but when you catch a strong fish that runs (like a bonefish), then if the puddled line gets caught on something in the boat, or if you stand on it, or if it’s tangled and the tangled line gets stopped by the rod guides, then your leader will snap and you’ll lose the fish. My line got wrapped around my reel. My leader snapped right in the middle of a knot. I possibly cursed.
  • Four fish came off the hook. That’s annoying, but that’s the fish’s goal, and sometimes it happens. I de-barb the hooks on most of my flies to make it easier to get the hook out of the fish, and on the first day I mashed the barbs on my hooks. On the second day, after losing all those fish, I didn’t. I’m sure my decision not to flatten the barbs had nothing to do with me landing that 12-pound bonefish. Or was it 13-pounds? I think it might have been 14.
  • For the rest of the fish, I failed to either set the hook or be quick enough to even try. It happens.

I lost one fish that wasn’t mine to lose. Hooking a bonefish is a bit like hooking an ancient Volkswagen traveling away from you at 30 mph: you think you can slow it with a rod and reel but you’re not completely certain. Kris disputes that, and says to heck with the Volkswagen, it’s like hooking a Jaguar XJ12 screaming away at 60. You just hold on and hope it breaks down.

Kris finally hooked her fish when Joe poled us toward the take out. She saw the fish, cast and spooked it, then recast and it ate the fly. Meanwhile I was busy scratching Boo-Boo’s head. The last time we’d switched places she hadn’t bothered to pick up her rod and was fishing with mine, and as soon as the fish started to run she was yelling for me to take the rod before she lost either the rod or her fingers or most likely both. Of course I was a little worried about her fingers getting caught in the line, but I was more worried about my rod, and worried most of all that we’d never manage a hand-off. We did, and 40-feet further out the fish came off the hook.

When Joe stopped laughing, all he could say was did you see her face? I had. It was a memorable face, a shocked face, a horrified face, and accompanying that horror was the excitement of the puppies, the whir of the line coming out of the reel, and Kris’s demands that I take the rod.

Kris asked later if I got her picture playing her fish. I didn’t.

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Bonefish Recipes

This was our second trip to Hawaii. I liked it well enough last time, but I wouldn’t have gone back, except, of course, it’s required. In 2019 I didn’t catch a fish, and I had to catch a fish. Maybe if I surfed I’d be more excited about Hawaii, but I’m not a beach guy, and the thought of me surfing is only amusing to everybody else, not me.

Hawaii is a trek from Houston; of the states only Alaska is further. It’s 14 hours of flights if you include the mandatory LA layover, and planes and airports and Covid travel entirely too well together. The combination brings out my inner compliance officer. When the government tells me to wear a mask at the airport, I’m all in, and the non-compliant lady next to me at the baggage claim makes me irrationally angry. She has an ugly nose, and I don’t want to see it. I really want to tell her that she has an ugly nose, but I worry that her husband with the even uglier nose might punch me, and notwithstanding my righteous wrath he might be justified.

Without the mandatory LA layover. It’s about 4,000 miles, and it’s a particularly unpleasant drive. From distance.to.

To top it off, except as a Christmas Island stopover, Hawaii isn’t usually considered a fly fishing destination.  I covet catching Christmas Island bonefish as much as I covet catching any saltwater fish, short maybe of Seychelles giant trevally, but the Seychelles (which are off the East Coast of Africa) are even harder to get to than Hawaii, or even Christmas Island. When my shoulder hurt last year, Mark Marmon told me about an orthopedic surgeon who fly fished—which seemed to me a reasonable basis on which to choose a doctor.  It turned out it was my neck, not my shoulder, but in addition to prescribing some stretches and a prescription for an anti-inflammatory, the doctor told me about fishing for giant trevally in the Seychelles. He said that he could only go every three years or so, because by the time he got there and spent a week fishing, the trip cost about $30,000.  I hope that included his flies.

The Seychelles, where the Giant Trevally roam. From Wikipedia.

In the same vein, at my annual check-up my cardiologist showed me pictures of the 28” rainbow he caught on his annual trip to Alaska, and the permit he caught last year in Belize. I didn’t share with either of them the photos of the bluegills I caught last year in Kansas. 

Relative to the Seychelles, Christmas Island is a bargain. There’s one weekly flight to Christmas Island from Hawaii on Fiji Airlines, not that I’ve looked, not very often anyway. Once you get there you’re stuck for the week, and the only thing to do is drink beer and fish. Sounds awful, doesn’t it? I guess if it’s good enough for Santa, it’s good enough for me.  

Christmas Island has a famous red crab migration, but as far as I know it has no red-nosed reindeer. Map courtesy of Google Earth.

Of course we didn’t go to Christmas Island, but to Molokai and Kauai in Hawaii, with an overnight in Honolulu on Oahu. I cashed in all of our accumulated credit card points so that we could fly first class to Hawaii on Delta. Except for the price, first class isn’t what it used to be—our snack on the flight from Houston to LA consisted of three kinds of pasteurized processed cheese food—designated as cheddar, smoked Gouda, and something called alpine-style, all three of which tasted exactly like Velveeta.  I like Velveeta, though I prefer it melted with a can of Rotel. Delta is missing a bet. If they had served queso and chips I’d be all in for Delta first class, even if the WiFi costs extra and the price of a first class ticket doesn’t get you into the Delta passenger lounge.

The problem with Hawaii as a bonefish destination isn’t the 14-plus hours of travel, it’s that it has the reputation of not having a lot of bonefish, and the fish it has are supposed to be  particularly skittish. Saltwater sport fish are different than freshwater fish. They’re stronger, and bonefish are built to outrun what ails ‘em—particularly sharks. They breed in deep water, but they come into the shallows to eat crabs and shrimp, and that’s where they’re targeted. Even in clear shallow water they’re hard to see, but with a sunny day, a good guide can spot the fish and tell you where to cast. I can see them sometimes, and Kris is better at it than me, but the guys who make a living spotting fish are amazing. All the angler has to do is cast where the guide says without spooking the fish, convince the fish on the retrieve that the fly is something it needs, and on the take remember to set the line—strip-set—not lift the rod. Of course lifting the rod fast and strong is the natural reaction to any take by a fish, and it’s what my momma and daddy taught me when first I caught crappie, so I’ve been doing it for a long time, but fly fishing for bonefish, if you raise the rod tip, you’ll never set the fly. The fish is gone and not coming back. You have to jerk the line straight back to set the hook.

I only raised the rod tip once, I promise. That was one of the nine or so takes where I lost the fish. Ok, maybe twice, but not much more than twice. Certainly not more than three or four times.

If you or your guide sees a fish, and you do everything else right, then you hang on.  Bonefish are extraordinarily strong, and when hooked they run for the border. They’ll rip out a hundred yards of line before you’ve rightly figured out what’s happened. Think of it this way: if you hook the fish at 40 feet distance, then less than a 30 seconds later the fish will stop running 260 feet away. It’s just amazing. All of you focuses into hanging on and wondering if the fish will ever slow.

Molokai bonefish flat. See the fish? That’s Lanai in the distance, unless I’m confused and it’s Maui. They’re both about seven miles away.

Targeted Hawaiian bonefish, Albula glossodonta, aren’t the same species as targeted Caribbean bonefish, Albula vulpes, which is interesting, and they’re generally bigger, which is good, but Hawaiians eat every bonefish they can drag from the sea, which is complicated. Consumers can buy gill-netted shrink-wrapped bonefish in the markets. To prepare the fish (this is the recipe part) they scrape the meat from the bones, and fry up the mashed meat as bonefish patties. I don’t know if there’s ketchup involved, but I’m pretty certain there’s no cornmeal. This may seem like no big shakes to a non-believer, but for most fly fishers, it’s an article of faith that bonefish are inedible, and killing and eating a bonefish is only slightly more appealing to most of us than eating a puppy. It’s just not done, and I’m so programmed that just the thought makes me kinda queasy.

Flyfishers tend strongly toward not keeping and eating fish anyway. They like to torture the fish and then put it back in the water so that another flyfisher can torture it again later.

In most places where bonefish are fished, the Bahamas and Belize for instance, catch and release is the norm, but Hawaiians, particularly Native Hawaiians, eat bonefish. Couple the island’s taste for bonefish croquettes with its lack of bonefish regulations—Hawaii doesn’t recognize bonefish as a gamefish, and the only restriction on killing and keeping fish seems to be that you can’t keep a fish that’s shorter than 14 inches–and flyfishers blame Hawaiian overfishing on the sparsity of fish inshore on islands like Oahu. Now mind, Hawaii is the bluest of states, and there’s nothing the islands love better than a good regulation. There are, for instance, no free grocery bags in Hawaii. If you go to the grocery without a bag, you’ll have to buy one. Same vein, your mai tai straw will be paper: there are no plastic straws on the islands. For goodness sakes, they restrict the kinds of sunscreen you can wear. Just take a gander at Hawaii’s Covid entry restrictions to get a flavor of the place—they require either a recent test or a vaccination card—but if you want to catch and kill all the bonefish in the sea, get busy.

My wristband evidencing proof of vaccination. I passed!

Killing and eating bonefish is a cultural thing, I get it, and while for me eating a bonefish would be bad form, I’m not squeamish or outraged about other people eating them. Still, if they’re gonna, I’d rather Hawaii had reasonable limits for bonefish takes, and I’m not convinced that using monofilament gill nets to overfish bonefish is an important Hawaiian cultural tradition. Of course then I’m a Texan, and cultural insensitivity is an important Texas cultural tradition.

Texas banned gill nets for redfish 40 years ago and it was a memorable political battle, but for once we got something right. It protects our inshore fishery, and it converted a fish that was once viewed as a slightly trashy food fish into a gamefish—still a food fish, but no longer gill-netted into oblivion. Maybe it helps that redfish are widely farmed, and maybe it’s culturally insensitive to compare the Texas redfish fishery to the Hawaii bonefish fishery.  I just can’t help being a bit chauvinistic, plus I’m selfish. I want all the bonefish left in the sea for me to catch. 

Bonefish flies.

In case you were wondering, the chain restaurant, Bonefish Grill, doesn’t serve bonefish.

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Happy 2022!

This will be our fourth year since we started trying to travel to each state to catch a fish, with 27 states completed. That’s a pretty good pace, but now I’m mostly retired, so maybe we can pick things up. I’d like to say there’s no pandemic in the way, but we’re in the midst of the Omicron resurgence, and flights are getting canceled to everyplace. Kris and I are inoculated of course, and the messages from the implanted computer chips say that it’s ok to travel if you can just find a plane. Plus I just ordered a new supply of N95 masks, just like the chip told me.

Officially I’m now of counsel, which means different things to different lawyers, but for me means I no longer get paid unless I actually work, and I’m only obligated to work if somebody needs my special expertise. Since I plan for my special expertise over the next year to involve a good bit of fishing, I’ll be happy to get paid for that. Or not.

Meanwhile, assuming that our flight doesn’t get canceled because the pilot has Covid, we’re making our second trip to Hawaii for bonefish this week. It’s our second trip because I failed to catch fish in Hawaii the first time. This time we’ll go to Molokai and Kauai, and both islands have promised me that I’ll catch fish, really, and I believed them.

Sucker.