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Not just another fish story

IF YOU'VE ever spent any time on the Big Island's Kona Coast, you know how important big-game sport fishing is to its residents and visitors alike.

Just take a walk around Honokohau Harbor or Alii Drive in Kailua-Kona and you will be convinced there is no other activity there that provides more interest, income, investment or entertainment.

And it shouldn't be surprising considering the offshore waters have often been regarded as one of, if not the best fishing hole in the world.

For this reason, the Kona Coast has long attracted some of the best folks with an affinity for fishing. From the boat owners, skippers and deckhands, to the anglers and those who supply them, all tend to be at the top of their game.

So it also shouldn't be surprising that Jim Rizzuto, an award-winning writer for West Hawaii Today, reports the activities of this very important hobby/sport/industry on a weekly basis.

Thankfully, for those of us living outside the distribution area of that newspaper, Rizzuto also compiles his weekly columns and other writing into an annual paperback known as The Kona Fishing Chronicles.

This year's book has just been released and, as usual, it is a very enjoyable read, and especially so if you're an avid angler or always wanted to be.

Unlike previous editions, Rizzuto leads off this year with the first 30 pages devoted to practical information for fishing with lures, rather than live bait.

From interviews with top skippers from Kona and around the world, he presents in the first chapter, "the secrets of choosing lures based on available prey, their target fish, changing sea conditions, hooking effectiveness and even the high cost of maintaining lure sets for all circumstances."

In the next chapter about lures, Rizzuto tries to find the answer to that age-old question: Does size matter? He follows that up by analyzing the importance of a lure's looks.

In part two of the book, Rizzuto begins his month-by-month journal of Kona catches in 2004, and though the information is dated, it is in another sense timeless.

Each month's chapter not only provides a record of the biggest fish (marlin, ahi, ono, mahimahi, etc.) brought into the scales in Kona, but includes an interesting variety of anecdotes on fishing in general.

There's one story, for instance, describing a confrontation between an ulua and a school of ahi that illustrates the ongoing argument of which fish, pound-for-pound, is the toughest.

Or, to show the nature of extreme fishing addiction, Rizzuto tells a story of two adults fishing aboard a 17-foot power cat, filled with 500 pounds of recently caught ono. Even after their boat got swamped, along with bailing, they actually kept on fishing because the bite was so good.

The Kona Fishing Chronicles, Volume 4/5 is available in bookstores, but Rizzuto would be happy to send an autographed copy to anyone who orders through his Web site at fishinghawaiioffshore.com.