We recently hit up the island of Kauai in the Hawaiian Islands. Surprisingly Kauai is known to have excellent largemouth, smallmouth, and peacock bass fishing. There is also good trout fishing in Kauai in the more remote areas of the island. We focused on freshwater flyfishing while we were there and targeted tilapia and peacock bass. Fishing the ponds around the resort we were able to land anywhere from 1 to 20 tilapia per day. It was fun to be fishing right around the condos and answering any questions that the other tourists might have about local fishing.
We also took a guided trip of Waita Reservoir to get on some peacock bass. Almost all freshwater reservoirs on the island are private, so the guide service was required to get us on the water. We targeted tilapia along the shorelines in the morning and they were ferocious to fly poppers on the surface. Well over 40 fish in the boat. We eventually headed out to the middle of the lake where the wind was howling and had to switch to spin casting setups.
Here we anchored down on an underwater rock wall that was built before the reservoir was filled. The banks of the reservoir are so muddy that they did not offer any real structure for the bass to hold to, so the rock wall was prime habitat. We ended up with 7 peacock bass between everyone on the boat. It was a great day of fishing and a once in a lifetime experience.
Please practice Catch & Release in urban settings to preserve these precious resources for other urban anglers.
We highly recommend Koloa ATV for guide service of Waita Reservoir.