Is it common practice for local Hawaiians to catch fish for food?

[hotzcatz]

We don't have the squirrel option here, unless we imported frozen squirrel meat or something like that from the mainland.

Yup, parrot fish is a speared quarry. Tasty, too! Had some parrot fish at a beach party once that was really tasty although I forget what they stuffed it with. It was fresh caught, which helps keep it tasty. That would have been about thirty years ago, though, and off Oahu's north shore. I'm sure if a similar parrot fish were caught today and prepared the say way, it would also be delicious.

[Rain Monkey]

Originally Posted by hotzcatz

Food fish for restaurants is ahi, mahimahi, ono and other large ocean fish.

Food fish you can catch from shore would be weke (goatfish), papio (different kinds of trevally under five pounds), ulua (trevally over ten pounds), o'io (tarpon - used for fishcake more so than fish steak), halaulu (some sort of sardine?), menpachi (tasty small red fish), ta'ape (smallish yellow snappers with a blue line on them) and something called a 'tableboss' since after all the rest of the other fishes are eaten, it's still boss of the table.

Eels, too, I suppose. Those will come and try to eat your bait if they can.

I seem to recall there are three or four major species (and numerous subspecies) of eel here: Moray, Conger, Snake and Garden(?) eels. I have never fished or eaten ocean caught eel. To be honest, the specter of missing a head shot on a Moray and hitting its body instead has always given me the willies. The other thing about eels is that some species are reported to contain ciguatera, a toxin harmful to humans, however I am not clear exactly which specie of eel is affected. Something to ask an experienced reef fisherman and the Hawai'i state department of fisheries. Lastly, the last thing I would ever want to do is a spend a hot afternoon attempting to skin an eel. It's a complete PITA.


Hotcatz, I think the 'halaulu' you reference above is actually called, 'halalu'. We've had great fun catching them at the beach up in Ka'a'awa.

[hotzcatz]

Oh, you're right, it's 'halalu'. That sounds right when it's spoken. Folks will line the shore with big long poles with strings attached and the poles fling the line out into the water, then the pole rises up with a fish on it and they put the fish in the bucket they're sitting on and the pole goes back down to catch another fish.

That's what we saw one dawn when we came sailing into Black Manele harbor on Lanai, a whole line of folks wearing long sleeved white shirts (this was before sunscreen with high SPF) with long red poles going up and down in a slow stately manner. Silver fish wriggling free and flying to be caught by the folks and then deposited into the white buckets. It almost looked like a religious ritual, but we'd also been sailing all night, so we may have been a bit sleep deprived. That was my most memorable memory of watching folks fish for halalu.

[mr.magoo]

Originally Posted by hotzcatz

The fishing isn't as good as it used to be, especially after that fishing fleet showed up that scooped all the fish stocks. That would have been around the mid to late 80's, I think it was. They'd just scoop up everything, take what they wanted and the rest would usually die off from being mishandled. They'd been somewhere on the mainland where they'd fished the place out and then arrived in Hawaii to do the same thing. I forget all the exact details but before that type of fishing was done here, there were a lot more fish.

For shore fishing, there's still some fish, but not very many in easy to access spots. Boat fishing is more productive although a lot of the catch from the boats is sold.

If folks want to move to Hawaii and be self sustaining probably raising chickens and rabbits would be more real world useful than fishing. Both of them, especially rabbits, can be raised without imported feed.

I've never fished the Big Island, only Oahu and Kauai...Don't know about 'netters' scooping up all the fish stock.
I keep an assortment of rods and reels at my brothers place in Oahu,..if you truly know how to fish, read the water, you will ALWAYS catch dinner for you and your peeps and nabes too...I learned from the locals..observe
listen, ,

I have a Beach front in Rincon PR...same deal, watch the locals, see what they are using for bait..watch their hand movements on their rod/poles

[glassnumbers]

Originally Posted by smarino

Fish are living beings. They are not "food". A lot of people might consider such a statement, well, odd. If someone wants to eat them, that's their issue, but to call them food.... you could say that humans are food for other animals too, so I wonder which varieties of humans are the tasty ones? It's good to remember the food chain :]

Everything is food, don't be weird. Everything is constantly consuming everything else, whether it be as concrete as the food chain, or abstract like time itself.

[Grassyknoll]

Originally Posted by glassnumbers

Everything is food, don't be weird. Everything is constantly consuming everything else, whether it be as concrete as the food chain, or abstract like time itself.

That is waaaaaay too deep for a Tuesday.