Arthur Graham’s Reviews > The Curse of Lono > Status Update
Arthur Graham
is 72% done
Every successful charter boat captain understands the difference between the Fishing Business and Show Business. Fishing is what happens out there on the deep blue water, and the other is getting strangers to pay for it.
— May 30, 2026 11:31AM
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Arthur Graham
is 94% done
That was the problem, Ralph. We were blind. The story we wanted was right in front of our eyes from the very start -- although we can be excused, I think, for our failure to instantly understand a truth beyond reality.
— May 30, 2026 12:55PM
Arthur Graham
is 90% done
It is not like fishing for trout. What we are talking about here is a beast the size of a donkey that is fighting for its life on its own turf. A ten-pound trout might put up an elegant fight, but a 300- pound marlin with a hook in its throat can rip your arm-bones right out of their sockets, then leap right into the boat and snap your spine like a toothpick.
— May 30, 2026 12:41PM
Arthur Graham
is 88% done
I didn't pack that goddamn brutal Samoan war club in my seabag for the purpose of crushing ice. There is a fearful amount of leverage in that bugger, and I knew in my heart that by the end of the day I would find a reason to use it. . . On something: maybe a fish, or maybe the fighting chair. There is a lot of mahogany to work with on a thirty-six-foot Rybovich.
— May 30, 2026 12:39PM
Arthur Graham
is 87% done
So much for that, eh? I think it's time to leave.
But before I go I want to tell you a fish story.
— May 30, 2026 12:35PM
But before I go I want to tell you a fish story.
Arthur Graham
is 86% done
About six hours after I finished the last draft on driving the Saddle Road, I was sitting in the fighting chair on a boat called the Humdinger and locked into a desperate struggle with a huge fish -- and 17 minutes later I had it reeled up so close to the boat that I was able to reach out and shatter its brain with one crazed swooping blow from the Great Samoan war club.
— May 30, 2026 12:31PM
Arthur Graham
is 85% done
I type all night and prowl the roads by day, looking for Pele. She hitchhikes a lot, they say, usually in the form of an old woman. So I do a lot of driving and I pick up many hitchhikers, especially old women. . . but age is a hard thing to be sure of at 55 miles an hour; and the lazy shameful truth is that on any hot afternoon I can be found cruising Alii Drive in my T-top Mustang picking up women of all ages.
— May 30, 2026 12:27PM
Arthur Graham
is 81% done
Forty thousand feet deep in some places, within sight of the Kona Coast. Eight miles straight down, off a cliff. It would take a long time for a body to sink eight miles down to the ocean floor. It is pitch-black down there, absolute darkness.
— May 30, 2026 12:20PM
Arthur Graham
is 70% done
King Kamehameha died on the eighth day of May, 1819, at the age of 61. His body was burned in a firepit and his bones were buried in a secret cave by his main kahunas, who never disclosed the site. King Kam has many monuments in Hawaii, but no tombstone. The same kahunas who buried his bones also ate his heart, for the power that was in it -- just as Kamehameha himself once fed on the heart of Captain Cook.
— May 29, 2026 09:44AM
The skipper is up on the flying bridge, facing the crowd and controlling the boat with both hands behind his back on the wheel and throttle. His deckhand and the clients will be standing down below on the stern, also facing the crowd and trying not to do anything wrong or awkward in these last crucial moments, as the boat backs slowly up to the scales and the chain-hoist swings out to pick up their fish.
Most of the “anglers” who have paid for the privilege of fishing for the big ones with the big boys in the world-record waters off Kona don't give a hoot in hell what happens to whatever fish they've caught, once they've had their pictures taken standing next to the beast as it hangs by its tail from the steel gallows on the end of the pier. The Bringing in of the Fish is the only action in town at that hour of the day -- or any other hour, for that matter; because big- time fishing is what the Kona Coast is all about (never mind these rumors about marijuana crops and bizarre real estate scams).
Kicking ass in Kona means rumbling into the harbor and up to the scales at sunset with a Big Fish, not three or four small ones, and the crowd on the pier understands this. They will laugh out loud at anything that can be lifted out of a boat by anything less than a crane.
There is a definite blood-lust in the air around the scales at sundown. By five the crowd is drunk and ugly. People on their first vacation out of Pittsburgh are standing around on the pier and talking like jaded experts about fish the size of the compact cars they just rented out at the airport.