Generational Hawaiian fishermen are highly respected and honored. These old-school traditional fishermen learned knowledge and skills handed down from their families that give them an intimate and priceless relationship with both the land and the sea. These attributes give them a connection to the sea that assures a food source for the onshore population.
For centuries, Hawaiian fishermen have fished for opelu, also known as mackerel scad. Traditionally, this small mackerel shaped fish with a metallic bluish green black and silvery white belly was a staple food for Hawaiians. Today, opelu are the second most important Hawaiian inshore fishery in catch and market value.
There are two distinct methods used to catch opelu whose oily and sweet flesh is great for grilling. They are the traditional hoop net method or a nighttime hook and line method.
This week, I am going to talk story about the traditional hoop net fishing method and a 77-year-old, third-generation hoop net fisherman. He is an amazing man, who is one of the last of a dying breed. Without being specifically written, his story also epitomizes the true love between father and son.
The hoop net style of fishing originated in Hawaii and other than the advent of outboards engines and nylon nets, it has remained largely unchanged since traditional times. Unfortunately, only a handful of hoop net fishermen remain.
This time-honored method involves attracting opelu into schools by using chum consisting of vegetables and ground up fish. The fish are then surrounded and captured using a 24 foot long and 40-foot deep hoop net dropped and retrieved from a canoe.
Specific fish aggregation areas, known as koas, were the majority of the customary netting grounds. Originally, the location of these bountiful koas was known only through extensive local knowledge of opelu fishing families along the Kona coast.
To be an opelu fisherman, you had to go through many years and stages of training that is sadly fading away and becoming a thing of the past. Many young fishermen have neither the willingness nor the patience to follow the guidelines of their ancestors. In our microwave, ultra-high-tech modern society many of us are accustomed to getting what we want immediately.
It wasn’t that way for Charles “Chuck” Leslie, an extremely humble, soft-spoken opelu net fishermen. Chuck is the kind of man who normally lets his positive actions do the talking for him. I’m grateful I had a chance to chat with him, he is the real deal and a walking history book.
‘I want you to learn’
Chuck’s story begins 72 years ago when he was 5 years old.
The young Hawaiian was holding onto a long net that his father was patiently tying and patching. Noticing that the net he is holding up was already tied off to a post behind him, the curious boy asked his father why he had to hold the net up since it was already tied off.
Second generation and renowned fishermen Henry Leslie responded “because I want you to learn” and continued to go about his business. Henry wanted to teach his son what his father had taught him, how to become a real fisherman.
He knew if Chuck stayed there he would watch what he was doing. Chuck continued to help his father every day with the cotton lined net, but was never allowed to work on the actual net itself until he was seven years old.
Henry would let the boy try to make eyes or rings for the net on practice pieces of the net that Chuck said: “never came out nicely, but my father was a very patient man.” Around this time Chuck started to get to go out on the boat too. This was probably a big deal for the child after spending two years listening to his father talk story while working on a net at home.
Fishing from a beautiful, old-style, Hawaiian koa wood canoe, with an outrigger, Chuck went to sea and worked in the back of the boat reserved for beginners. The front of the boat, or “the box”, was reserved for the most skilled fishermen.
Having years of background training and knowledge, the front man was very proficient and an expert at finding opelu. The front man’s job was to use a keen eye and find schools of opelu, read the currents and wind to determine the best koas to fish, use landmarks as their GPS, and decide the best time to deploy and pull in the net.
In the back of the boat, the seven-year-old would anxiously wait for the command to begin chumming, dropping weighted bags filled with chum that consisted of vegetables like pumpkin, avocado, taro, papaya and ground marlin.
When Chuck was eight years old, exhausted after a long days of fishing, he would come home and practice the fine art of patching the net. He practiced on separate pieces of an old net to learn and not mess up the net they were going to use the next day. Chuck said his patch jobs “came out horrible, but my father would say that’s all right, you’re getting the feel of it.”
With patient and loving teaching from his father, Chuck continued to fish and work on net repair daily. He would fish from 5 a.m. to 5 p.m. His hard efforts were showing because he was now working on all aspects of the net. By the time he was eleven, Chuck had learned to make complete nets on his own. He still uses some of those same nets today.
Head to the box
Chuck’s life as a fisherman changed when he was 14 years old, almost ten years after holding a net that was tied off to the post. Years of hard work and his father’s teaching finally paid off. The day came when he made his own opelu net and was told to “go to the box.” The young man became the front man and had earned the right to be called a real opelu fisherman. This was a title he earned and a tradition he has carried on for the last 63 years.
Most of the time Chuck net fishes solo for opelu, no longer fishing from a canoe but from a small skiff. He is a master of this process. In regards to his father, Chuck said: “my dad was my best friend. He never discouraged me but would always encourage me even when I made mistakes”.
Another thing Chuck said I found interesting was “all the people I fished with never discouraged me, they never cut me down even if I made a mistake, everyone always encouraged each other.” This is something you don’t always see in the sportfishing world and attributes that will, in turn, make a great fishing team.
It’s also worth noting that Chuck has never noticed a decline in the opelu fishery over the years. He says it has remained practically the same since he first started fishing for them for them 63 years ago.
Chuck’s story goes well beyond the scope of a newspaper column. Modern times have caught up with traditional opelu net fishermen like him. The traditional Hawaiian fishing culture that sustained Chuck’s family for three generations is gone.
His son served honorably in Army Intelligence during the Gulf War and is now working as a federal agent with Homeland Security specializing in tracking the Yakuza and Chinese mafia.
Hope for future opelu net fishermen lies with very few.
In closing, I wonder how many people ate fresh fish over the past six decades thanks to Chuck. We should all be grateful for fishermen like him.
For those interested, there is going to be a film festival running from Jan 1-9 in Waimea and at the Four Seasons. Chuck will be featured in a film called The Last Opeluman. The schedule for the film festival will be available on Dec. 23. For more information go to waimeaoceanfilm.org
Captains, crews, shore fishermen, please like, follow or post your pictures on our Facebook page “Kona Fish Report,” and if you think you have an interesting offshore, bottom or shore fishing story, please email:markjohnstoncatchingup@gmail.com or jdegroote@westhawaiitoday.com