How much do you know about shortnose spearfish?

[Jon Schwartz]

Hi this is Jon Schwartz. I have an article about shortnose spearfish, the world's rarest billfish, in new issue of Marlin Magazine. In this article I profile three top Kona captains who have catered to anglers seeking to complete their royal billfish slam. The captains are Marlin Parker, Guy Terwilliger, and Gene Vanderhoek.


They graciously allowed me to tag along in Kona this past summer and spend a couple of days interviewing them and taking pics. I learned a lot about the species, and how to target them, and also picked up on some really interesting facts.



One involves the appearance of the species in Kona. As Marlin Parker stated, they didn't really start showing up in Kona until the 70's, and he would know because his dad pioneered big game fishing there in the 40s, and Marlin has spent his whole life there.

Gene Vanderhoek also had some cool anecdotes. He says, "In Kona, we have spearfish, and we have spearfish swallowers!" Of course what he's referring to is that the shortnose spearfish, which average 35-40 pounds, are eaten by giant blue marlin. That ain't theoretical, either; he's seen a spearfish fall out of the mouth of a 1049 pound blue!

Gene also related that when he was vying for the world record for spearfish on 4 pound test, he had a "disadvantageous hookup" on a relatively large spearfish and the thing went down and dogged him. Six hours and 28 minutes into the fight, a big blue marlin came and ate it!

There's a bit more about the article on my blog here http://bluewaterjon.blogspot.com/ and if you want to see some brand new fishing pics, check out the 60 or so new images in my galleries here http://www.bluewaterjon.com/photogallery.htm
Take take and tight lines,
Jon Schwartz
Fishing Articles, Photography, and Travel
http://www.bluewaterjon.com/

[HI50]

Capt. Kevin Hibbard of the JR's Hooker who used to run the Marlin Magic for Marlin in 06', has a great pic of a 7oo lber he caught that has a fresh spearfish bill sticking out of it's forehead, broken off at the base. The bill still had blood coming out of it when the fish was weighed and the rest of it were freshly packed in the marlin's stomach. They are c cool fish, went 7 for 10 on them one day while crewing for Bill Crawford on the "Chiripa" in Feb of 07"....

[Jon Schwartz]

That's wild! Where did you see that picture? I think I have seen pics of marlin with broken off bills in their heads, and maybe that was it.

[HI50]

He showed it to me a couple of days later after weighing the fish. Go to jrs hooker website email and I know he would be happy to share it with ya. He is an awesome guy, I was lucky to fish with him over there plenty.

[Jon Schwartz]

I will do that. I think I was in touch with him this summer when I was over there and had tried to accompany some charters on that sweet boat he runs, but it never came to fruition. For sure I will contact him, though.
Thanks again,
Jon

[Captain Michael Buffington]

he fished a 10 day with us in '99 and we had some great talks. He taught me the australian braid on that trip. Cool guy with some great stories.

Mike

[Jon Schwartz]

Mike, yeah Gene is a cool guy. He does this thing called the shotgun, where they take the rod out of the holder, and aim it at the fish. To be more specific, say they are trolling, and Gene sees a fish show in the spread. He'll tell Chris (Choy) the mate to "shotgun", which means, take the rod out of the holder- while the rod still has the same amount of drag pressure as it would be if it was in the holder- and aim it straight at the fish, holding it on his shoulder as if it were a rifle or a shotgun. He does this to eliminate any play in the rod, which he feels can mess with hookups. He got this from flyfishing for billfish. I have hours of interviews with him that are really interesting...
When they do the shotgun on a big blue marlin, it's pretty freaky to watch! I'm a pretty unconventional guy but that really shocked me, I thought it was super radical to take one of those Duel reels- I guess they are equivalent to 130's in function but about the physical size of a standard 80- and do this.

Needless to say it worked like a charm and Gene seems to be known in the business for having a super high hookup ratio. What also blew me away about him was his use of single hook rigs, with relatively small hooks. This stuff may well be the subject of another article, but suffice it to say his methods were very unique, at least to my eyes. So was his approach to drag management for that matter! You can't argue with success though and he's had a ton of it so good for him.
Here's a pic I took of the view from the cockpit of the 39' Rybovich he captains, the Sea Genie II. It ended up in the new coffee table book that was just put out by Rybovich.

[Captain Michael Buffington]

When I left the gulf I thought I had it all figured pretty good only to arrive in the long range thing and realize I didn't know chit. I did that for a couple of years and thought I knew it all only to meet Gene and know I didn't know chit

Mike

[Jon Schwartz]

In fact I'd reckon Kona has some of the most experienced captains on the planet. Not everyone there is, but there sure are many who are really top notch with decades of experience. And the amazing thing is that the average charter rates are a fraction of the price than they are in some stateside locations, and even Baja, for what you get. There you're in the fish right when you leave the harbor, and the boats are really luxurious and in good condition compared to a lot of other places. I'd say maybe 800 a day is about the average price for a full day on something like 46 feet, although I could be off by some. The guy who charges the most there still only charges 1300.

[Captain Fred Archer]

Jon,

We used to catch some down in Cabo every year. They weren't a common catch, but we caught our share. And they were the only billed species that we didn't C&R besides swords. I never heard that they were endangered or anything like that - they just never showed in the Cabo area in big numbers. I knew that they were superb eating, so we took them most of the time.

Interesting to me, at least, was the picture in your article, especially where the fish is hooked, basically in the center of the bill, just in front of the mouth proper. Virtually all of the ones that we caught were hooked there. Turned out it was quite easy to actually split their bills, after which they died. Since we released all of our marlin and sails, my leaders and rigging were set up so that my crew could really put the boots to them, especially at the end game, all in the interest of releasing healthy, hot fish.

We had to learn to take it easy once we saw that we had a spearfish hooked (we often took them as wahoo at first sight) on our heavy all-around charter gear so we wouldn't split their bills, lose and kill them. We also lost some fish that my anglers were leaning on and after seeing how easy it was to split their bills, I came to the opinion that that is what caused those lost spears...split bills, instead of pulled hooks. We used single hook "scorpion" rigged stiff rigs exclusively. (That rig is shown in my marlin book.)

Another interesting thing in the article for me was the "shotgun" thing. The first time I saw that done was in my very earliest Shimano days on a trip to the Hudson Canyon out of New Jersey on Howard Beyer's Harkers Island boat. One of my reps, Dick Kondak, picked the rod out of its holder that had a white marlin trying to mug it, but missing. He raised the rod straight up, took two steps back, then ran back to the transom with the rod pointed at the fish. I watched the lure go right down that marlin's mouth, he hooked him up, then handed him off to my chief reel engineer, Hideo Noda, to fight and land.

I started doing the same thing on striped and blue marlin and sails in Cabo, mostly to show off, I think. But it sure did work!

You are right, there are some world class captains and crews in Hawaii. And that's the surest place I know of for catching spears, too.

Good article, Jon. As you can see, I really enjoyed it. Thank you and keep up the good work.