With the three hour time change it was pretty easy to wake up at 5:30 to go fishing. My goal was to catch my first bonefish on the fly in Hawaii, not in the Bahamas like everyone else. I was more or less clueless and discovered that it was nearly impossible to see the bonefish before he saw me. This made it nearly impossible. I waded in the knee-deep water for hours with zero success.
I often run into local oddball fisherman when visiting strange places and today was no different. Kevin, dressed in a white one-piece jump suit complete with safari hat told me that it took him months before he landed his first bone. I think I needed some professional assistance.
Hit the one and only fly shop in Hawaii next and booked a half day trip with the Hawaiian bonefish king, Ed Tamai. I’d been hearing of the legend of Ed Tamai for years and tomorrow I would fish with him.
The guy at the fly shop suggested we have an authentic Hawaiian lunch. He directed us to this hole in the wall joint called Ono. I ordered a little of everything. The main dish was chicken wrapped in spinach leaves. There was poi, rice, pulled pork, salmon relish stuff, and a strange rice like jello substance for desert. Most of it was good. The pulled pork was great and the jello stuff was inedible. Everyone who is anyone Hawaiian has eaten there and has a signed photo on the wall. It was Springfield College's own Don Ho's favorite restaurant and most days the line for a table goes around the building.
Next stop, Pearl Harbor. You all know the story and it was cool to see it all in real life. The highlight was the boat trip out to the USS Arizona. Like many other war ships, that Arizona was sunk by Japanese aircraft claiming the lives of 1,177 service men, women and civilians. Aside from the Asian tourists, the mood was a somber as the ship, still lying just beneath the surface, has become the grave site of the lives lost when the ship sank that day. Interesting to me was an oily film on the water’s surface. When the ship was sunk it was filled with millions of gallons of oil, which leaks and will continue to leak thru a pin-sized hole for the next couple hundred years.
I found a couple of things a little odd about the experience as well. American tourist wanted photo's of the sunken ship/burial site while japanese tourists wanted the same pics but wanted to be in the photos. Also weird was that there was all kinds of stuff said about the horrors of that fateful day.....there was no mention of the horrors of how the war with Japan ended.
On my first day here a guy told me to "Hang loose like a mongoose". I saw a "lifer" mammal at Pearl Harbor also.......a mongoose was ripping around the grounds!
Had some scampi at the Red Lobster….walked a little on the beach and called it a day.
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