I've been diving for a little over two years now, and I've yet to land my dream fish, an Ono. I've seen them on multiple occasions and I've even shot one in the past. Unfortunately the shot I took didn't penetrate through the entire mass of the fish and the Ono got away. Ever since I picked up the sport of free diving and spearfishing, it has been an on going goal to shoot and land an Ono.
I am so happy that I can now proudly say that I have indeed, landed a nice Ono. On a recent dive, we ran into a school of these fish and I was lucky enough to get one. This is how it went.... so we, Brandon and I, were diving at a regular spot on the east side, around 45ft of water. We were diving the reef for a while and we decided that we should move out to deeper water, in hope to find easier fish ( the fish at 45ft. were a little skittish.) So we got in the boat and motored out to deeper water, we haven't really dove the deeper waters to where we were diving. So we just jumped in the boat and blindly drove out looking for a deeper reef. After driving for a couple minutes, we decided that the water was probably deep enough; I threw in the anchor and jumped in the water to see what it looked like. When looking in the water I was surprised, it was deeper then I had expected, it looked like it was 90ft deep and it was completely barren. I quickly looked up to Brandon and said "this spot sucks, there's no fish at all," I then stuck my head back in the water for one last look before getting in the boat, and to my surprise, there was a large Ono swimming toward me a couple feet under the surface. I quickly responded energetically and yelled to Brandon, "there's Ono's!!!" I then grabbed my gun as he grabbed his and we both jumped in the water. After taking a better look, there appeared to be 5-6 Onos. We played a little stalking game with the fish for about 5min as they slowly became more comfortable with us, and swam within distance of our spearguns.
As one of the Onos swam close to me, I pulled my gun in front of me, looked down the shaft to aim, and took the shot. I was filled with adrenaline, as the shaft left my gun towards the Ono. The shaft hit the Ono, and the fish instantly flipped to the side, I stoned it, shot right in the spine. The fish was actually pretty far away and had I not of stoned it, it would of gotten away, because my shaft then fell out of the fish; It didn't even puncture all of the way through the Ono. The fish was upside down going through some sort of epileptic seizure. Brandon swam towards it to try to grab it, but it was progressively moving away in its seizure act. So, he shot it one more time as a back up shot.
I then reloaded my speargun at the speed of light, and handed it to him so that he could try to shoot one of the Onos. They stuck around for the next 5 mins as I grabbed hold of my Ono. Unfortunately, from that point on, none of the fish came within range for Brandon to take a shot. I secured my catch and brought it into the boat as we got back on. We talked about the exciting event, I was filled with cheer. It was an extraordinary event, that I will remember for the rest of my life. I'm so lucky that I got such a great shot on the fish, I'm so lucky that we ran into the school, and I'm so lucky that I landed the fish. We later cleaned, cut, and ate the Ono. I distributed a lot of the fish to friends, as there was too much meat for just our families to eat. It was delicious fish, Ono is my favorite to eat. The Ono ended up weighing 50lbs. It was a great day of diving, I'm blessed and can't be more thankful for the opportunity that was given to me... So stoked I live in Hawai'i. Always looking forward to that one more drop....
