Kelcey Chandler-Yates and Jim Yates present...

UnderSeaPhotoVideo.com

One second we are sitting enjoying the morning sunrise, and the next moment the reel lets loose with over a hundred yards of Mono. Corky yells "Marlin on! Get the rest of the lines in!" We have just left the pass off Hunga, an island in the western area of Vava'u, in the Kingdom of Tonga. In the southern Hemisphere, Hunga is known as the billfish capital, with the world-class private fishing lodge of Ika Lahi for the fishing aficionado. We are anchored at Hunga and out for a day of fishing with our friend Corky, a retired fisherman from the Bearing Sea, on his boat (Jack of Hearts). We spent that next hour bringing in a 300-pound Pacific Blue Marlin. As we fought it up to the boat and watched it tail stand five feet from the stern, we tried in vain to tag it. Off he went, released without harm to live another day. At Hunga they catch and release all billfish, as is done in many other areas of the globe, to maintain the bill fishing resource. Americans travel all over the northern hemisphere including the Bahamas, Florida, Cabo san Lucas in Mexico and to Kona, Hawaii in search of bill fishing but few know about Vava'u. Let me tell you, there is no place like the Kingdom of Tonga.

When out two weeks ago, we started our day with landing the 300 lb Pacific Blue, and then went on to catch six 15-30 pound Yellow Fin Tuna and a Mahi Mahi. During the landing of the tuna, we witnessed a sailfish come up behind the boat and strike at out lure twice, only to swim away. They not a half an hour later another Pacific Blue Marlin bigger than the last one came up displaying his dorsal fin as he struck at our lure and ran out with it. He stayed on for a while before returning to the murky deep. What a day. On that same day, Davy the guide from the Ika Lahi Fishing Lodge landed a 102-pound Yellow Fin chasing the same pod of tuna that we were following.

After a day of fantastic fishing, we retired to the picturesque anchorage at Hunga to watch the sunset while eating fresh Yellow Fin sashimi and drinking a glass of Australian Chardonnay. An almost perfect day! (Just too far from California for a fine Napa Valley Chardonnay.)

The European Development Fund through the World Bank has helped the Tongans place FAD's (Fish Attraction Devices) offshore around Vava'u which has greatly assisted in making this area one of the prime bill fishing destinations in the Southern Hemisphere. For those interested in fishing in the Kingdom of Tonga at a fraction of the cost of fishing other areas go to tongafishing.com or fishtonga.com for the local operators in Vava'u, the Kingdom of Tonga.