2000fish's Blog – Steve Wozniak's hunt for fish species

DATELINE: JANUARY 18, 2025 – OAHU NORTH SHORE, HAWAII

It was a small gathering of close family and friends, in a beautiful corner of Oahu, but we were there for a very sad occasion. Although my sight was a bit dimmed, I could look just a few hundred yards down the beach and see Goat Island, the first place I ever fished with Wade Hamamoto. Just a few hundred yards south, and 25 years distant, we were both still young, fearless, and catching chub after chub, not worrying about whatever was lurking in the chest-high slog back to the mainland and worrying even less about what that triple-bacon pizza was going to do to our intestines. It was only a few hundred yards, but half a lifetime away – so close but just out of reach.

Steve and Wade, a lifetime ago. That’s Goat Island behind us.

The same spot, January 18, 2025.

I never wanted to write this post, but here we are. I deliberately didn’t say anything during the holidays, because I wanted everyone to have a great Christmas, but now it’s January and I have to grapple with Wade Hamamoto being gone.

We knew it was coming, but that didn’t make it any easier. When he passed away last November 30th, it was the end of a difficult journey that was intensely private. Wade didn’t want anyone to know he was ill, and he’d be annoyed at me for telling you now, but it’s the only way to put some context around losing one of the best fishing buddies I’ve ever been blessed with.

2024, if I may say, was a shit year for this sort of thing. Dom Porcelli, a kindred spirit and one of the few people who would fish later than me, passed away suddenly in February. Pastor Mike Channing, the limitlessly decent man of faith and expert on rough fish, passed away in September. And then this news came. I wanted to just throw in the towel on Christmas and sit and watch “Brian’s Song” over and over, but that would be completely dishonoring a man who found joy in every day. He just didn’t have enough of them.

From the time he was a kid, Wade didn’t get dealt a good hand health-wise, and stuff started to go seriously wrong about five years ago. When I visited in 2021, I actually thought it was to say goodbye, but he hung in there a few more years, because any moment he could get out onto the beach, any moment he could spend with Jamie, any moment he could spend just watching the wind and the waves, he was content. We are both completely emotionally retarded, and even when Jamie tried to give us some alone time to talk through the fact we knew he wasn’t going to live long, all we managed was some mumbling and then a discussion about the best baits for threadfin.

We did manage to eat five pounds of prime rib.

I met Wade in 1997, when he was a limo driver in Honolulu. I had fewer than 80 species and had barely fished outside the US. Shockingly, the trip wasn’t for fishing, but we got talking and he promised to take me out the next time I visited. We had a few missed connections, and my ex-wife was never thrilled at the idea of me taking a day out on the water, one of the many reasons that the “ex” crept into her title. Wade and I finally got out on May 3, 2000, wading out to that small island on the north shore and catching the heck out of chubs, none of which, of course, were the highfin.

From that stage, it was a constant race to get to Oahu and to find new stuff I hadn’t caught. We found ourselves trudging across miles of beach after bonefish, crawling around suspicious outflow pipes in the middle of the night after morays, up at 4am to get parking at the prized “preserve” spot (because it’s NEAR a preserve, so calm down,) and in some desolate harbor after midnight because a trumpetfish kept showing up. We targeted anything from huge GT to minute gobies, and took pride in every catch large and small. Wade became family very quickly, and we stayed close the rest of his life.

Fairly quickly, a new face showed up in the car. A small, cute face, (nearly) impossible to hate, even as she grew into Jamie and started catching things I still can’t dream of getting. Even as a toddler, she was smarter and had more common sense than Wade and I combined. Jamie was the center of Wade’s universe. He wrote his own eulogy, because he probably didn’t want me to get too gushy, but part of it spoke of the day Jamie was born – “Now let me go on and tell you about my best day … the best was when my daughter Jamie was born. I don’t know if it was love at first sight or I don’t know but everything changed when she was born. I never loved or cared about anything more. My goal as she was growing up was to prove it. It’s easy to say I love her and care for her but someone from the outside looking in, could they prove it from what I was saying and doing. I wanted it to be real and it is. To this day, that is the love of my life.”

Father and daughter, back when she was little and cute.

Apart from pushing her to be the best student she could be, which made her valedictorian of everything from kindergarten onward, their thing was fishing together. Day or night, rain or shine, fish or no fish. I’m not close to my father, but he did introduce me to fishing, so bless him for that. Still, Wade and Jamie fished together more in an average week than I did with my dad lifetime. It gives me joy to see a great father in action, and Wade gave everything a dad could.

Jamie became as much a part of the fishing excursions as the malasadas, and I got the chance to watch her grow up.

Malasadas. Like a donut, but better.

Some of my most difficult Hawaiian species were caught under her tutelage, and I like to kid myself that I helped her a little bit as well. But as much as I’d like to think I helped her with world records, it was always suspicious that the moment I caught a Hawaiian fish record, she would break it quickly, almost like she was courteously waiting for me to set it first.

Our first boat trip together, July 2006. I caught my first picasso triggerfish that day. Wade got brutally seasick, but never said a word. Well, he did say one word; “Bleeeeeargh.”

Marta and Jamie became fast friends, because they both enjoy giving me a hard time.

In 2008, we explored the eastern part of the island, and I got to fight my first bonefish. Jamie handed it off to me, and I promptly broke the line like an idiot.

Moments before the disaster.

Moments after the disaster.

Steve and Jamie with matching humuhumunukunukuapaas, 2008. I call this place “The Aquarium Spot” because I can’t pronounce the Hawaiian name.

Wade with a custom-made stealth handline, useful for bonefish in places where swimmers might complain about a rod.

One of our favorite spots was Heeia, a pier north of Honolulu that always seemed to have something new to catch.

Wade at Heeia, 2010, moments before my first undulate moray.

It wasn’t long before Jamie was setting world records on her own and winning IGFA honors, like top female saltwater angler in 2014.

One of the group photos at the 2014 IGFA annual awards. You might recognize a few other faces in there.

Wade introduced her, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen a man more proud.

Marta and Jamie discussing that I had never caught an angelfish.

Jamie and her trophy.

Not that I’m pointlessly competitive, but I did win two that year.

The whole gang out for dinner in Miami. Marty Arostegui generously took us fishing the next day, and Jamie caught a Caesar grunt just to be mean to me.

On the way out to the reefs in Florida. Jamie is smiling because Wade is about to be profoundly seasick.

Jamie picked on him ruthlessly.

There were some other great trips in Honolulu after that. In 2016, they organized an awesome long weekend that saw me get a few of the more difficult targets, especially – FINALLY – my lagoon triggerfish.

I caught it on Wade’s rod. He knew where they were and the exact rig to use.

Father and daughter, at some restaurant that served mostly Spam, 2017.

A nice porcupinefish, Heeia, 2017. Wade guided me to the record on this species in 2010, up in Haleiwa, shortly before we ate all the bacon at Pizza Bob’s. All of it.

I had planned to visit in 2020, but Covid put a cramp in that, and then, in 2021, there were some hints that Wade’s health was slipping. Wade would let on that he had a cold, but Jamie quietly let me know things were a lot more serious. I got on a plane, knowing it was pretty much to say goodbye.

Family portrait, 2021.

At Heeia, 2021, trying to talk Jamie into going back for more malasadas.

Our last photo together, near Goat Island. According to Jamie, we look like a couple of idiots dressed up as ketchup and mustard for Halloween.

We kept in close touch via text and phone for the next few years. There were fish pictures back and forth, especially when Jamie caught something rare and wonderful. There were discussions of trips, and perhaps the occasional mention of not feeling well. But there was certainly never anything about what we meant to each other, because that would involve discussing feelings, and both of us would rather eat glass than discuss feelings.

Christmas 2023. Jamie is still looking for an orange filefish ornament to put on the tree.

Jamie kept me up to date on how things were really going. It got bad in late 2023, and 2024 was up and down. He still got out to the water a few times, and Jamie treasured every one of them. His last fishing trip was November 1, 2024. But just after Thanksgiving, things went south in a hurry. I woke up to a call from Jamie on November 30. He was gone. I thought back to Goat Island in 2000, and every trip since then, and I went into the back yard and cried my eyes out.

On January 18, we gathered on the North Shore to say goodbye. A small group of family and friends drove up to a beach, a place Jamie picked more or less at random, because there are hundreds of spots throughout the island that would be sacred to them. It just happened she chose Goat Island.

The group. Mostly family, one friend from high school, and some white guy from the mainland.

Jamie had his ashes, packaged in a water-soluble container. (With a malasada tucked in the wrapper.) She just needed to walk him out into the surf and let him go. She was, by far, the most composed person there, and she eased into the water, waded out chest-high, and committed her father back to the ocean. We watched the package sink, then slowly disappear.

Wade would forever be in the ocean he loved.

Wade lived life with joy every day, and a profound acceptance of his own mortality. “Anyone who cries at my funeral didn’t really know me that well.” I screwed that one up. I hope he’ll forgive me.

It goes without saying that Jamie, and one of her uncles, brought along some light surf gear. I am not a big believer in the supernatural, but exactly six minutes after the scattering, Jamie’s rod slammed down hard. She raced over and set the hook, and whatever it was put up a determined fight. It was a bonefish, one of Wade’s favorite fish, and she quietly landed and released it.

If Wade was going to send us a message, that would have been it.

We spent the rest of the day wandering the island, fishing occasionally, and visiting some of the required spots like Matsumoto’s Shave Ice in Haleiwa.

Jamie actually knows Stan Matsumoto, who owns the place.

Marta had to go home that very night, but I decided to go over to Kona and not catch a spearfish. I brought Jamie along, so I could fish with a great friend and she could get away from home for a few days.

As always, my go-to guy in Kona is Captain Dale Leverone on the Sea Strike. Conditions weren’t perfect, as there had been a bad west wind that made the water murky, but it was still great to see Dale and crew.

Steve, Jamie, Dale, and deckhand Dean.

We trolled. And we trolled. And we trolled. There was a spearfish caught somewhere not too far away, which gave me brief hope, but it was not to be. Bottom fishing was also a bit slow that first day, but fish were caught, and we still had a day ahead of us.

We enjoyed excellent local cuisine and an afternoon on the town pier, but the roiled-up conditions made it slower than normal. We still got plenty of reef creatures, but nothing unusual.

One restaurant I have to recommend is Jackie Rey’s, my hands-down favorite on the island. This is the owner, Chad, and if you only get one meal in Kona, make it here.

Perhaps, someday, I will come to understand the law of diminishing returns, but let’s face it, I was still fishing on a pier in Hawaii. That made me happy briefly, until I got broken off multiple times by big surgeonfish.

Sunset at Kona pier.

I will never use AI to write anything, but if I had, it would have spit out “Steve didn’t catch a spearfish on day two either.” There were three caught on Kona that day, and brutally, two of them were on a boat that Jack was working.

We did get some interesting creatures bottom fishing, including some nice surgeonfish.

Jamie and a solid yellowfin surgeon. While I’m sure her sun hat is practical, it kind of reminds me of the “cone of shame” you put on a cat after surgery.

I got a nice Hawaiian hogfish, although it wasn’t even close to Jamie’s world record.

Well into overtime, I had a big hit and battled what I presumed was a small amberjack to the surface, where it turned out to be a positively enormous bridled triggerfish. It looked bigger than the stupidly big one I caught in South Africa, so I put it on the Boga. It was 3.25 pounds – a new world record, and some redemption for my angling dignity.

Record 242.

Jamie and I spent the rest of the afternoon hammering the pier. The morning was beautiful – the water had cleared, and I got the assortment of tropicals that had made so many great memories here. It occurred to me that I hadn’t been blogging when I caught most of these for the first time, so someday, when we’re both really bored, I’ll do some retrospectives.

Tobies are always fun to catch.

The smallest scrawled filefish we have ever seen.

A saber squirrelfish – a rarity that usually comes out of deep water.

We had a few hours to fish in the morning, and, mostly because there is a fine line between optimism and stupidity that I have never grasped, I went out with high hopes. The saddle wrasses were out in force, but alas, nothing new would bite. Jamie kept herself busy on butterflyfish, and I kept reminding myself that I had over a dozen species and several world records from this very spot.

In order to make my flight, I knew I would need to be back up to my room at 11, so as it got later in the morning, I began to accept that this was not going to be my day. Then Jamie did that thing that she does best, always preceded by those dreaded words “What’s this one?” She had caught a shy filefish, another creature I had never seen in person. I remained calm.

I reminded myself she couldn’t have done it on purpose. Or could she?

Before I was fully finished hiding my rage from the filefish, she pulled up a wrasse that wasn’t quite anything I’d ever seen. It was a five-line wrasse, so-called because I wrote five lines of obscenities when I texted an unsympathetic Marta about the situation.

Oh, #$@*&($%@ing $#%@. Seriously?

So there we were, in an hour, where Jamie, using the same rigs and the same bait as me, caught two more things I don’t have. As I struggled for something clever yet spiteful to say, it occurred to me that somewhere, Wade was laughing his ass off. And that made me smile.

She also got an octopus, which was safely released.

A few hours later, we were both in the air heading to our respective homes. I knew Jamie would be ok – she always is. She had some good family around her, some good friends, and just gotten her dream job – as a liaison between the NOAA and the Hawaiian fishing industry – and would be starting in a few weeks.

I thought back to 2021 and that meal Wade and I had. We could have sat at that table for a month and never gotten around to a real discussion about feelings and mortality, and I’m not about to start now. But one thing I did say to him before I left, and one thing I will say now, is thank you.

Thank you for over twenty-five years of friendship, for dozens of days on the water, for my first fish in Hawaii, for nearly a hundred species and an assortment of records, for introducing me to malasadas at 5am and triple-bacon pizza at midnight, for showing me every corner of the beautiful island that was his home, for being the brother I didn’t have and letting me borrow the daughter I never had. There will never be another Wade, but there is a Jamie, and she will always be a part of our family.

Aloha ‘Oe, Wade. Until we meet again.

Steve

Wade Hamamoto 1963-2024.