Fishing anyone? If you visit Okinawa, you must try the deep sea fishing! I'm actually shocked at how many people never go out on the boat and fish in Okinawa. I know.... it's too hot, humid, stinky, and you get sea sick. Well, grab your sun shades, motion sickness medicine (the Japanese fune yoii kusuri, as it's the best) and book a charter. You won't regret it.
Although I own my own boat, I like to charter with Blue Water Explorations Captain Chris Pancoast. He speaks fluent English & Japanese and has a very nice 110 ft. commercial fishing boat that makes the trip as comfortable, and fun as it can get. Chris has over 20 years of fishing experience in the Ryukyu Island chain, and caters to individuals and groups of all sizes. On my last trip, a group of eight of us went trolling and drifting. We set out at 5:30 am, and returned to the port at about 6 pm. We landed 60+ nice-sized yellow fin tuna, a few mahi mahi, one wahoo, a barracuda, and many katsuo tunas. As we were trolling on the way back, we landed a modest 100lb+ Marlin! These fish can fight, and it was extremely exhausting hauling this thing in. There was too much fish to take back for most of the group members, but I was prepared. My van was ready with an extra large camping cooler, and I was able to haul back home about 200 lbs of fish!
The next day I had a tuna BBQ on the grill and invited all my friends. Good times! Of course, I still had plenty of fish left over and had to be creative on the dinner menu the next few days. Another nice thing about Chris and his Blue Water Expeditions is Chris has a variety of charters available based on the type of fish you'd like to catch. You can choose from trolling, to bottom fishing, night time charters, deep drop fishing, and even shark or squid fishing!
On a typical excursion, you leave about 5:30 am, and you cruise for about 2-3 hours of trolling until you arrive at the "piles". The piles are a string of artificial reefs/eco systems the fishing association had built to attract marine eco systems out at sea. The result is, you will catch fish and Chris will put you right on top of them! If you want to have a great day fishing, contact Chris at Blue Water Explorations.
