For three days every August, the shoreline of Hawaiʻi Island becomes a stage for one of the Big Island's most enduring community rituals — a fishing tournament that has spent nearly three decades threading together generations, families, and an ancient way of life with the ocean.
The 28th annual ʻOhana Shoreline Fishing Tournament returns this year from Aug. 28-30, with registration now open through the Hawaiʻi County Department of Parks and Recreation. It's a contest with a deceptively simple premise: anyone with a rod, a reel, and a stretch of rocky coast can chase the prize of a lifetime, and the whole island gathers in the little Hamakua town of Honokaʻa to find out who hauled in the heaviest fish of the weekend.
The heart of the tournament beats at the weigh-in, held from noon until 1:30 p.m. on Sunday, Aug. 30 at the Honokaʻa Sports Complex on Lehua Street. That's the moment the three-day competition becomes theater — when anglers file in with coolers and strings of fish, each catch weighed, clipped, and recorded by Parks and Recreation staff while the crowd of families and rivals watches to see whose name will top the leaderboard.
Six separate divisions shape the field, each reflecting the tournament's belief that fishing belongs to everyone. There are Men's and Women's divisions for adults aged 18 to 54, a Teen division for 13- to 17-year-olds, a Keiki division for children 5 to 12, and a Kūpuna division for those 55 and up. The sixth, the ʻOhana division, is the tournament's heart in a different way: family teams fish together, allowing multiple generations to share the experience.
Entry fees are modest — $35 for the adult divisions, $30 for teens, keiki, and kūpuna, and $25 per ʻOhana team — and prizes and awards are given for the top ten heaviest fish in each individual division. That accessibility is the point. This is not a tournament for deep-sea charter boats; it is a celebration of the oldest kind of Hawaiian fishing, done on foot from the shore.
That shoreline tradition runs deep on the Big Island, where shore casting for ulua — the giant trevally that prowls the reefs, often at night, in pursuit of the same fish anglers offer as bait — has long been a rite of passage. Ulua regularly dominate the tournament leaderboards. Last year's Teen division winner, Jaedon Segawa, caught a 53-pound ulua, while kūpuna Kahana Itozaki topped his age group with a 40-pound ulua. The species has anchored the tournament's history for as long as anyone can remember; back in 2013, at the 17th annual edition, Kahana Itozaki took the Men's division with a 53-pound ulua, one of more than 400 participants who turned out that year.
The tournament has grown steadily over the years. In 2025, the 27th annual tournament drew 292 entrants, with 65 men, 31 women, 27 teens, 32 keiki, 21 kūpuna, and 37 ʻOhana teams.
But the tournament has evolved well beyond simply crowning the biggest catch. Every entrant is automatically enrolled in an Invasive Species division, a nod to modern conservation concerns, in which the winner is determined not by weight but by the sheer number of three common invasive reef fish caught: taʻape, the bluestripe snapper; roi, the peacock grouper; and toʻau, the blacktail snapper. All three are non-native predators that compete with native reef life, and the tournament turns their removal into a friendly competition. Last year Mark Nakamoto of the Kūpuna division took that category with 51 invasive fish — 43 taʻape, three roi, and five toʻau — caught over the weekend. It's a category that gives the old contest a fresh ecological purpose, encouraging anglers to harvest species that local fisheries managers would rather see thinned out.
The tournament also carries a creative streak. Every entrant is automatically entered in an art contest, and last year's winner was keiki division entrant Aleia Viernes.
The tournament is organized by the Hawaiʻi County Department of Parks and Recreation. The logistics of entry are old-fashioned by design. Registration packets and tournament rules are available at Parks and Recreation facilities island-wide, as well as at S. Tokunaga Store in Hilo, J. Hara Store in Kurtistown, Hawaiian Island Creations in Waimea, and Pacific Rim Fishing at Honokōhau in Kona. Forms can also be downloaded from the county's Parks and Recreation website. But completed entries must be mailed to the Recreation Division office at 799 Piʻilani Street in Hilo, postmarked by the deadline. Only mailed entries are accepted, and there are no late entries. Checks are payable to the County of Hawaiʻi Director of Finance.
The event is supported by a number of local businesses and organizations. For more information about the tournament, call Shelton Kalilikane at (808) 217-6074 or Mark Osorio at (808) 936-4285.
As the 28th edition approaches, the ʻOhana Shoreline Fishing Tournament remains what it has always been: a chance for a kid with a handpole to beat an uncle's ulua, for a kūpuna to prove the old skills still work, and for an ʻohana to spend a long weekend together where the land meets the sea. The fish come and go, and the leaderboards change from year to year, but the tradition — and the crowd gathering in Honokaʻa to honor it — endures.