On Target, Off Beaten Path : Tourism, Hunting, Fishing Growing on Lanai, Where Only Crop Used to Be Pineapple

The archer, stalking his quarry, creeps around a rock, draws his bow, takes aim, releases and scores a perfect shot on . . . a fish?

It isn’t hunting, and it really isn’t fishing. It’s bowfishing, Hawaiian style.

Bowfishing isn’t unknown elsewhere. In California, for instance, archers may shoot skates, rays and sharks and many non-game fish, including carp. But ideal bowfishing calls for warm, clear water, a deserted coastline with tide pools formed by coral and volcanic rock and an abundance of colorful tropical fish--a combination of conditions found on Lanai, this lesser known of the Hawaiian Islands, where it doesn’t even require a license.

Ken Sabin can take you bowfishing where Hawaiian kings spent their holidays or lead you to the best bird and mammal hunting in the islands. Every couple of hundred yards along the way over red dirt roads his pickup truck will flush coveys of quail-like gray Francolin or nesting ringneck pheasants.

“We may see some deer out this morning, too,” he says.

Sabin has several mounted trophies of the island’s axis deer, distinctive for the white flecks that camouflage them in the low, dry brush when they aren’t browsing in what’s left of the pineapple fields. Some weigh up to 180 pounds. In the hills there are Mouflon sheep, harder to get but prized by trophy hunters.

Recently, another species of wildlife has been introduced to Lanai: tourists.

Lanai is in transition. It isn’t “the pineapple island” anymore. At its peak in the post-World War II years, it was the largest pineapple plantation in the world, with much of its 139 square miles planted to the exclusion of any other crop.

Then, in 1985, when cheaper labor was producing cheaper pineapples in South America and the Philippines, the Dole Foods Co. saw the bottom dropping out and sold its 98% of the island to CEO David Murdock, who has shifted the economy to tourism.

Now it’s called “the private island.” Pineapple fields are becoming golf courses or have been turned over to hay, which takes less water, which is in limited supply on Lanai and can be better used to irrigate fairways. Now there are only a few pineapple fields remaining, their yield almost entirely for local consumption.

Until the last couple of years, there weren’t many reasons to visit Lanai, except to watch pineapples grow or to visit friends and relatives. And with only 2,400 residents, there wasn’t much call for that. The fishing and hunting opportunities weren’t promoted because air service was infrequent and the only place to stay was the 10-room, 70-year-old Hotel Lanai in Lanai City, the island’s only town.

Now, there also are the 102-room Lodge at Koele, opened three years ago amid the forests of Norfolk pines, banyan, eucalyptus and jacaranda where the ranching operations were centered in the cooler highlands at 1,600 feet, and the 250-room Manele Bay Hotel, opened two years ago in a cove on the site of a village dating to 900 A.D.

Koele has an 18-hole golf course designed by Greg Norman. Top that, Manele. OK, next year Manele will have a course designed by Jack Nicklaus. It already has suites offering butler service and a menu with escargot.

But if down-to-earth Arnold Palmer shows up, he may choose to sample the traditional teriyaki plate lunch at the Blue Ginger Cafe in town.

Small, twin-engine planes shuttle passengers to and from Honolulu, Maui and Molokai every hour or two. A new terminal is being built. Locals who once worked the pineapple fields now staff the hotels. Lanai is adapting, but it’s still a lot like Maui was before the condos came a generation ago.

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Ken Sabin and his friend Michael Caballero still know everyone on the island, and they can still find an isolated beach to do their bowfishing, where friends stop to watch and pass the time, of which they seem to have a comfortable amount.

Sabin, a district supervisor for the city and county, has lived on the island all his life, except for nine years of military service. He knows about every inch worth knowing--where the fish are, where the deer and sheep hide. He also hunts those animals with a bow, often with his son.

“We work as a team and rattle ‘em in,” he says--meaning, one will rattle two racks of antlers together to draw in a buck eager to join the rut.

But this day, Sabin is after fish in the tide pools of coral and ancient lava flows. Although the shots are sometimes taken at point-blank range, it’s a a little trickier than shooting fish in a barrel. “The difference in the bowfishing the way we do it and the way they do it on the mainland is that here the fish move,” Sabin said.

Sabin recently was featured on Mike Sakamoto’s Hawaii-based TV fishing show. “We’d see the fish, but the cameraman would say, ‘Wait, I’m not ready,’ and the fish would leave. So I finally said, ‘Look, I’ll stick it and we’ll simulate the rest.’ ”

One of Sabin’s favorite sites is Kaunolu, once a fishing community and place of refuge on the southwest corner of the island. But partway down the road to the beach, Sabin sees that the 7.8-magnitude Japanese earthquake of a few days earlier has created a mild tsunami across the Pacific, making the surf too rough in that area. Instead, he turns his pickup around and heads up the coast to Kaumalapau Harbor, from where Dole once shipped its pineapples to Honolulu for processing.

The sport, it seems, is also part rock-climbing. Sabin and Caballero, wearing rubber booties with felt soles, like the ones fly fishermen wear, pick their way around the bay over slippery boulders and along sheer lava rock faces, as the sea washes in and out of caves below. They use 60-pound compound bows, with large reels holding retrieving line attached to their arrows.

They wear polarized glasses to eliminate glare off the surface of the water as they look for parrotfish and omilu, also known as jack crevalle. Smaller, brightly colored species also are plentiful.

The fish come into the pools to feed on seaweed, coral, fleeing mullets or the black crabs that skitter over the rocks. The fish are usually within sight and range only for an instant, before the next wave churns up the pool, and when the water clears they are gone--now you see them, now you don’t.

The sun, too, is a problem. When it’s bright, the water is light green and clear all the way to the bottom. But when a cloud passes, the water turns dark and the fish lose their iridescence.

The parrotfish appear bright blue to a novice, but Sabin and Caballero call them green. The omilu are larger and also blue, with a light stripe along either side. Caballero sees a pair swimming together--one blue and one black.

“They turn black when they’re excited,” he says.

It’s a tough day. The fish are skittish and the sun is playing tricks. Sabin keeps looking back over his head to see when the clouds will pass. He lines up a parrotfish for a shot and thinks he has scored a hit--but then the line goes slack.

“One thing about parrotfish, the flesh is so soft that you have to make a head shot or close to it,” he says.

Later, he and Caballero try another site at the base of a sheer 40-foot cliff, which requires some climbing skill. From above, Caballero spots a three-foot omilu cruising the shallows and yells to Sabin where the fish is going, then watches the fish play its game of hide and seek. Every time Sabin wades to another spot, the fish disappears and reappears where Sabin was before. Four times Sabin comes back up the cliff, frustrated, and four times he sees the fish below, taunting him.

Caballero says, “Ken, he’s telling you, ‘Come get me, man,’ ” and Sabin climbs back down again.

At mid-afternoon, the tide is in, pushed by a powerful wind from the direction of Molokai. Now the pools hardly clear between waves, so Sabin calls it a day. The pineapples may be gone, but the omilu will be back tomorrow.