December 1, 2014 — The ulua, also known as a giant trevally, or G.T., is a brute among fish. It’s linebacker-shaped, all blunt forehead and blocky torso, with the thin, bladelike fins of a high-speed ocean predator. Trophies can reach well over a hundred pounds of silver-clad muscle. Catching one is like towing a Volkswagen Beetle with your arms and a stick, then pulling it up a cliff.
That’s right: cliff. The ulua we are discussing here are fished from a high, rocky Hawaiian shoreline. Any fool can hire Captain Quint and go plunder the deep sea. Ulua fishing, island style, means no boat, no sonar to track your monster, no mates to land it for you and winch it high for manly posing at the dock. It’s just you, with a rod and bait, plus muscle and courage.
That is what I tried to muster on a trip to the Big Island of Hawaii in May. The island, with its smoldering volcano and jagged-lava coastline, is the best place in Hawaii for shoreline ulua fishing, and I went there to find one of the island’s best ulua fishermen, Desmond Valentin, a 40-year-old member of the Hilo Casting Club. Desmond holds the club’s ulua record, for a 136.6-pound fish he caught in 2010. It landed him on the cover of Hawaii Fishing News
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