Sam,

The guide is Capt. Jon Jon, and his website is localfishingknowledge.com. He's a lifelong Maui resident, son of a commercial fisherman, and he seems to know his stuff. His phone number is 808-385-1337. He takes reservations months in advance. We were only able to get the half day we did because one of his clients who is in Maui for 2-3 months at a time was willing to re-schedule.

Like Coley posted, patterns of mantis shrimp are preferred. The guide ties and uses some pretty simple and crude patterns, and he went gah-gah over the flies I brought. The favorite was a pinkish-dark tan color, size 4. I didn't get a month by month color description unfortunately. Rubber legs on the mantis are good.

Incoming tide is what we fished, but Jon Jon intoned that if you know where to look, you can also fish outgoing. The fishing was a bit physically demanding, especially when we started getting knocked around by the waves. Make the longest cast you can along a channel or structure line, then fan your casts. Let the fly sink. Then make "pronounced" strips, up to 3', fast. These shrimp apparently haul ass when they know a fish is around. There are a couple other flats species that you might encounter besides bonefish, but I don't remember the names. This was a lot harder than any PS beach fishing I've done and most steelheading too, for that matter. So many casts even my arm hurt after 4 hours.

The good beaches are scattered. A good place to begin is in Kehei. Drive down to the road closest to the beach. There is public access every 500 feet, or maybe it's every 500 yards. Anyway, that's how you get to the beach unless you're already staying there. Hike N and S looking for any changes that equate to struture, which are travel routes that bones are attuned to according to Jon Jon. You may see 1 or 2 other fly fishermen, which probably means Jon Jon and a client are fishing the area or maybe some other tourist.

Good luck!Sg

So, I'm in the process of tying up some tropical flies. I think I may bring some of my cut throat patterns too, but, here is my latest ties from last night.

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Not sure I like the green with the pink. I'll change that up. But, I bet the fish don't care much.

Put the mountain of yarn aside for a brief bit this evening and tried to revisit this whole married wing thing.

Wound up with a fly but not super happy with it.

Throat is too long, tippet too short, head too fat, and ugly body hackle. Couldn't keep the wing from folding up on itself at the head and it is too short as well. The whole fly came up short of the eye by quite a bit, or rather I made it so.





Good practice. I'll be hacking it off the hook shortly. Need more materials, surely that is my problem...

Mingo: what weight fly rod do you use for those reef fish?