Gene Higa 2011 Spearfishing tournament

My dive partner and I entered the Gene Higa Memorial dive tournament this past sunday. The tournament is a memorial to a fallen diver, Gene Higa, as well as all the other fallen divers out there. It takes place on the north shore of Oahu at mokuleia beach and the boundaries stretch across mokuleia. Its a "biggest fish" tournament so everyone is out there looking for the big hogs.


We didn't really have a game plan going into this tournament, as it was the first for both of us. We swam out far enough pass the mokuleia drop off to where it was about 100-120ft depth. We dropped a flasher system that i made, and we chummed sabas for hours. We were lacking luck that day and nothing came in. As we drifted back to the drop off, i shot a 6.5lb uku. I was stoked on the uku as it had potential to place. Later i found the seven eleven crab. The crab was huge!. Never before have I obtained, let alone seen a  7-11 crab in the water. It took several drops to free and grab the crab out of this giant cave in was hiding in. The claws on the crab were huge and I was a little hesitated when grabbing him.

After bringing it back to the weigh in, is when i realized how large it really was. Everyone was congratulating me on the catch, both the uku as well as the crab. The crab weighed 3.4 lbs and beat out the old state record 7-11 crab by .3 lbs.  Unfortunately their was no largest crab category :P 

Overall it was a great experience for my first tournament, and all you other divers out their..... were gonna be ready next tournament, the fall shoot out is on the home ground. Gonna be exciting!