Lake Wilson (1969 -1979)

[Stan Wright]

Hi Stan,
River memories. They have such real connection to the present, don't they? I read the threads related to the past: great reading!

I recall those things about the river too, all so incredible & true! "Blasts from the Past"(1969-1979): I too remember, good friend, the summer ol' river (N.Fork) was nothing but a stream 10ft. across. A friend & I (about middle-school aged at the time) WALKED across it, getting our legs stuck up to our knees in the mud (broke our thin rubbah slippahs). Scared we'd sink like in quicksand, we lay flat on the mud & CRAWLED across the rest of the way (to inspect the Whitmore side of the river). I do remember though, the mud was a rich, CLEAN mud. Weird! The entire river - gone! Was no more than 3ft. deep, where it still "flowed".

We saw isolated pools just FLAPPING with stranded live fish - five pound bass, two-foot plus channel cats, bluegill, shad, pungee the length of your arm - man, all kinds of fish! The pools were writhing with puntats. Thousands of dead crayfish were everywhere & LIVE ones crawling all around too! (Remember how they lived in holes in the side of the bank & right under exposed tree roots)? In those days the river was jam-packed with red crayfish that got GIGANTIC.

Back to when the river ceased to exist: The exposed bank & mud was littered with shad, mosquito fish & oddities we didn't know. We were sad, but I knew the river would refill (I think drought was the cause). Saw many dead largemouth bass; I remember one whopper - must've been nine pounds. We poked at dried-up dojos, some smallmouth bass, tons of small gold carp, hunkering 3-foot (maybe 35-pound) wild koi - all dead. And the biggest tilapias we ever saw in our lives; some still alive in the pools. Some exceeded 24" (the size of big tucunare), probably seven to ten pounds, with eyeballs the size of quarters. Spent three/four afternoons poring over & gawking at all the fish. So strange...all this where the water was usually 50ft. deep!!

As you may have guessed, I grew up on the N.Fork (have little knowledge about south fork). Our tackle?...bamboo pole & cheap spinning gear! Had a favorite: seven-foot bamboo pole with duct-taped rag for a handle with five fly rod-style snake guides & a rod tip affixed (using electrical tape!!). Wrapped extra 15lb line around the handle - it was sort of like a fly rod. I let off extra line to free-line earthworms (sort of "lobbing" out away from the bank) - a blast catching tilapia & bluegill! The "other": really cheap, small spinning reels on old-fashioned solid glass spinning rods. These were trout style ultralite, but very strong because the solid fiberglass blank - darn things could be bent in full arc, no problem. The reels were so fun: the bails were shaped one-piece wire - no roller or line guide at all. Had to open & close the bail manually with your off hand! The drag was ridiculous simplicity; plastic-to-plastic friction! The gear ratio was 3.0:1 (LOL!!!). We could buy all this with our allowance back then. We re-spooled with 15lb line since 20" tilapias were common & occasional 15" largemouth, tucunare & arm-sized pungee. The line was so thick we'd end up with only 25yrds. on the reel! (We never did cast very far anyway in those days & come to think of it, 25 yards is SEVENTY-FIVE FEET of line!). The line was like small rope so we cranked the drag down shut & let the rod do all the work! We didn't even need the drag!!

We used hook & worm nearly 100% (Never used minnows). Worms always caught everything & anything in the river for us - in combo with a tiny ball floater (the little tiny red & white plastic ones!) or lobbing it out weightless. Though fascinated with lures, we rarely used them; very expensive & snagged on everything. Earthworms just plain worked. We dug 'em up free right out of the yard. It was outrageously fun when those marble-sized floaters got yanked under by whopper tilapia & giant bluegill.

We used a cheap inflatable that we paddled like a Hawaiian canoe. Never rowed it (oars) because we tried once & didn't get anywhere! We realized that if we paddled we could cover large distances. We'd paddle for hours. Bought it at Coronet Store, downtown Wahiawa. Remember Coronet?! Oh, my God! My favorite store of all time!!

There was a favorite place we'd go in our little inflatable: a place teeming with tilapias. It was an area of about 40 cubic yards of water. And it was absolutely filled from top to bottom with 40 cubic yards of tilapia! The school was there permanently; it never went away. Every square inch of water was boiling with tilapias. There was more tilapia than water. Wouldn't dare go near the surface there for fear of dorsal spines deflating the boat. The entire surface of the river there rippled continuously with tilapia. We would stay clear & cast from the edge. The upper half of water had fish 6" to 10", while the lower half down to the bottom fish were 10" to 20", with a few goliaths 21-22". We were utterly dumbfounded by this place. It never ever lost it's magical grip on us - like entering a time warp or something. We fished there every week & I did that for a span of several years of my life without break! At times we'd hook largemouth bass here. It was also where those giant red crayfish lived in great numbers, in little cave-like holes all along the riverbank.

Fun fishing to all, Steve Y.

A Roster of larger gamefish in the North Fork in the good old days, as I remember. In order of prevalence.

1. Tilapia. 6"-24", up to ten pounds, perhaps even larger. 12"-16" very common. Incredibly abundant.
2. Bluegill. 6"-10", 7"-9" very common. Very abundant/widespread.
3. Largemouth Bass. 9"-26", up to ten pounds. Common between 12"-19"(2-5lbs.). Scattered/widespread.
4. Pungee. 8"-36" common. To twenty pounds. Scary - mouth full of teeth. Can eat anything. Widespread.
5. Smallmouth Bass. 8"-20". Up to five pounds. Only in certain areas/not abundant.
6. Carp (Wild goldfish). 6"-10" common. Relatively abundant/widespread.
7. Channel Catfish. 8"-60", 8"-28" common. Relatively abundant/widespread. Reports of monstrous fish.
8. Tucunare. 8"-34", 8"-22" common. Up to thirty pounds. Scattered. Not abundant in North Fork.
9. Wild Koi. 29"-39", twenty to forty pounds. Huge fish released into river somehow reproduce; rare but
scattered and widespread. Wild fish lack floral coloration of pond koi - become a brassy color.
Rarely ever caught with hook and line. Could live to 100 years old.
*Notice that Oscar are not mentioned here: Very rare in the North Fork.
*North Fork had huge numbers of self-reproducing populations of dojo, huge schools of shad, vast numbers of mosquito fish and guppies, large populations of puntat (Chinese catfish) and an incredible abundance of crayfish which grew large and brick red with age. Another crayfish, (different species) existed in abundance as well, which was noted by a light brown color and smaller adult size. Sightings of Hawaiian Owl (Pueo) surprisingly common in northern half (Mauka) of North Fork.

At about mid-North Fork, there was a section of river that was at least fifty yards across and fifty to sixty feet deep! The northern half of North Fork became clearer and clearer as one traveled Mauka (upstream), until it actually became GIN clear. The substrate also became less and less mud and more sandy. North Fork headwater was an unspoiled, free-flowing. pristine, rock and boulder-strewn stream that moved at a rate of at least a couple thousand gallons-per-minute. The water roared over, around and past beautiful boulders, some as large as volkswagens. The substrate of the stream was pebble, rock and sand. It was an Eden-like environ, surrounded by a dense, tangled, jungle-like forest that also had towering trees of various type with confirmed, regular sightings of Hawaiian Owl.

[hitoshe]

wow! i wish i grew up in wahiawa! i would've loved it! i grew up in kaimuki and as a kid in the 50's and 60's i went to the palolo and manoa streams to fish and fool around (wahiawa was too far in the "country"). i also remember an abundance of puntat, tilapia, dojo, and sometimes carp and bass. now i go there to catch live bait (tilapia, convict cichlids, liberty mollies) for lake wilson fishing, and i never see any other species around besides armored catfish (plecostomus).

i remember in an earlier post someone mentioning that the tilapia in the lake seems to have been thinned out from a few years back. i agree. i also rarely see any bluegill or pungee, and i haven't seen any dojo or crayfish for years - are they that scarce now? or just very good at hiding from all the predators? the tucs (large predator), red devils (medium sized predator), and banded jewel cichlid (small predator) seem to be the most prevalent - and agressive - fish in the lake now. maybe they're doing too good a job of wiping out some of these other fish?!?

[Stan Wright]

That is amazing. I've seen the lake change over the last 30 years, but nothing like that.

I was wondering if that place up the North Fork with all the tilapia wasn't the Whitmore Village outfall. I remember a huge school of them around there. Also at the one by the regular sewage plant. Now they don't have a waterfall into the lake... it's pumped out deep in the middle. Lots of armored catfish there, but not the tilapia all over the place like before.

I also don't see the bluegill like I did before the sulvenia molesta closed the lake. I catch one ever so offend, but not like before.

Kids still like to fish there.