George Parker

George Parker was an absolutely legendary waterman who made an indelible impact on the Kona fishery and on big game fishing as a whole.

Born in 1911 in San Diego, George grew up around the water from an early age. He was enrolled in college at Stanford in the 1930’s when the Great Depression hit. The Parker family struggled financially as a result of the depression, so he left college and became a lifeguard in Del Mar beach to make ends meet. He was always a phenomenal swimmer so the job suited him well. One of his lifeguard friends ended up catching a freighter to Oahu and fell in love with everything about Hawaii….the beaches, the weather ,the surf, the girls, and of course, the fishing. George followed his buddy over on a freighter shortly thereafter and moved to Oahu in 1935.

He always had a passion for fishing and aspired to have his own charter business. However, as a new transplant to Hawaii, he needed to put food on the table and save some funds first in order to make that dream a reality. As a result, he took an accounting position with Theo Davies a large sugar cane company. Over the course of the next 10 years he was able to save enough money to buy his first boat, the soon to be legendary, Mona H. George’s career as a charter fisherman began in 1945 when he started one of the first charter businesses in Hawaii out of Kewalo Basin.

The majority of charter clients at the time were members of the military on R&R. A few years after launching his charter business, George had 4 military service members ask him to take them on a charter to Kona as they had heard stories about the burgeoning marlin fishery in Kona. He took them on a multi day charter across the Hawaiian islands from Oahu to Kona, and they absolutely crushed it….breaking line left and right, in addition to landing some sturdy fish. That trip is what initially drew George to fishing in Kona.

George had been on Oahu for the Pearl Harbor bombing in 1942 which was an extremely traumatic event. The combination of fear of a similar event happening again on Oahu, plus the amazing fishing and flat seas that he found in Kona served as his main motivators to move to Kona full time. He officially made the move and became resident of Kona in the late 40’s.

Once he got to Kona, the charter business was slow as no one else was really running charters at the time. He came up with the strategy to go out fishing solo and once he’d get a nice marlin he would drive to Kailua pier, hoist the fish up into his truck, and drive it down to the Kona Inn which was the only real hotel in Kona at the time. They put a block and tackle up on a coconut tree in front of the bar at the Kona Inn, and would hoist the fish up in front of the tourists at the bar which would immediately attract a crowd of onlookers. This turned into his most successful strategy to secure new charter clients. All told, George founded one of the original charter fishing operations in Kona, and an entire industry of future legends in the fishing world followed in his footsteps.

Fast forward to 1954 which was a huge year in respect to fishing history. This was the year that George Parker designed his first trolling lure and caught what would be a game changing world record marlin on it. The lure was appropriately called a “towel rack lure”, and although relatively simple in design, it had a huge impact on the future of trolling. It was fashioned from a circular piece of leftover metal towel rack that George picked up out of a scrap pile from the remodeling of the Kona inn. He cut a piece off the towel rack, stuffed a wooden dowel of equal girth into it for floatation and to make it more sturdy, beveled it to make it splash when pulled behind his boat, drilled a hole down the middle of it for the leader line to pass through, poured some lead behind the dowel to give it extra weight for rougher days, tied on a hook and there it was. One of the very first trolling lures known to man.

George’s most noteworthy catch, a 1002 Blue marlin, was caught in November of 1954. He was on his way to dry dock, by himself, driving back to Oahu from Kona…a pilgrimage that he made annually due to there not being a commercial harbor in Kona at the time. The channels in between each Hawaiian island are some of the roughest pieces of water in the world as the towering mountains on each island such as Mauna Kea, Mauna Loa and Haleakala magnify the dominant tradewinds and force the winds into the gaps between each island. These channels are extremely rough and unpredictable, and having to navigate them single handedly without modern weather forecasting and without modern navigational tools is a massive feat in itself.

George’s grander bit towards the end of the trip, in the Kaiwi channel off Koko Head, Oahu. George endured the 3.5 hour fight and was able to secure the fish and drag it back to Honolulu harbor. There was quite a bit of controversy surrounding this catch, as the belief at the time was that there were only black marlin in Hawaii. George was certain that his catch was a blue marlin and fought the IGFA to recognize his catch. In the end, he was able to demonstrate that his catch was, in fact, a blue marlin, and became the all tackle world record holder for pacific blue marlin.

George’s first son was born 3 months later in January 1955, and given all of the excitement and recognition behind his recent prized catch, he decided to name his son Marlin Parker. Most fishermen will quickly recognize Marlin’s name, as he is one of the winningest tournament captains in history, and has continued the family lineage running his own charter business in Kona and has his own line of very successful trolling lures.

George made a few resin lures in his life in addition to the towel rack lure, but was primarily a live bait fisherman. He never sold any of his resin lures commercially until 1968 when he and Marlin invented “the hookless lure”. Marlin Parker was a boarding student at Lahainaluna at the time, and had a dried marlin bill on his desk where he was supposed to do his schoolwork. Marlin’s mind was always much more focused on fishing than school, and one day while he was procrastinating about doing his homework, he started twirling around his nylon key chain and incidentally whacked the key chain on the marlin bill on his desk. Those of you who have held a marlin bill know that the texture is similar to 60 grit sandpaper, and the bill’s coarseness caused the nylon key chain to stick to it. Marlin ended up unbraiding the keychain, got it wet, hit it on the bill, and it completely stuck and got wrapped up in the bill.

It was at this point that he realized that you could actually catch a marlin by getting a rope stuck on its bill. When Marlin returned to Kona on a school break, he showed his discovery toGeorge in the living room of their house and they ended up playing tug of war with the unraveled nylon completely sticking to the bill. George saw an opportunity for a new creation, and hollowed out the back of an old lure, ran some rope through the back to create the first hookless lure, and the very next day ran it and caught a marlin on it without a hook.

Lure fishing for marlin historically has a low hook up ratio because their bills are so hard and bony that it is hard to get a hook to penetrate, but the Parker’s saw this hookless, rope lure as a means to dramatically improve hook up rates while also not hurting the fish they were catching because there is literally zero harm to catching a fish with a rope….they are just getting their bills tangled up in it. The amazing part is that Marlin really came up with the original idea behind this creation when he was only 14 years old.

All told, the Parker’s attempted to go into commercial production with the hookless lure, and went as far as to get a patent on it. However it was considered by the IGFA to be an entangling device and they disallowed them from being used in tournaments. The buzz and production of them fizzled out shortly thereafter. Marlin, to this day, is a huge advocate for the hookless lure and will occasionally use them. He frequently had clients call bullshit when he would tell them the story of the hookless lure and that they couldn’t possibly work. So he would bet them whatever money they had in their pockets that he’d catch a fish on the hookless…. and as long as the bite was decent he would almost always catch one. Marlin used them all the time in the 70’s and 80’s and still has them rigged and ready to this day.

Another interesting fact about George Parker is that he was the only person with a dive helmet in Kona in the 1950’s, and as a result, he was tasked by the Kona boating community with servicing all the moorings in Kailua Bay. Keep in mind that this is before scuba diving came into existence, and also before there was a commercial harbor in Kona. He subsequently lobbied for 10+ years to get Honokohau Harbor built, more than anything because he was tired of having to service everyone’s moorings! He ended up picking the current site for the harbor, and Honokohau Harbor came to fruition in the early 1960’s due in large part to his efforts.

A side story about George being in charge of mooring maintenance in Kailua bay is that he called his house in Kona “Bali Hai” and hung a big koa sign outside the house which was his alarm during southerly storms. When the sign would bang the side of his house he would immediately get up no matter what time of day or night, run down to Kona bay, jump off the pier, swim out to his boat and take it up to Kawaihae so it didn’t break off the mooring and blow onto the rocks which was common place for boats moored at Kailua bay.

In 1968 he received the second highest Coast Guard recognition that a civilian can receive, the Congressional Silver Medal of honor. It all happened because a giant southerly storm pushed in one day, so he went to Kailua bay, jumped in to his boat and was heading up to Kawaihae. This was one of the biggest storms he had ever seen, and it came with a massive southern swell. While on his way up the coast, George came across a sailboat that was on the verge of getting pushed into the rocks on the shoreline. Being the water man that he was, he timed the sets, throttled up hard, and rushed the Mona H into where the sailboat was. One of the crew on the sailboat had already been thrown off the boat into the water. George was able to rescue him, and mind you that he was on the boat by himself, so all of the driving and rescuing is being done single handedly. After rescuing the first person, he had to rush back outside before the next set of waves, then jams back in, throws a rope to the captain and drags the boat out of harms way and up to Kawaiahae. He ended up saving 2 lives, and kept the boat from getting destroyed, all while a Coast Guard C130 buzzed above and witnessed everything. He was awarded the Silver Congressional Medal of Honor for his heroism and bravery on December 20th 1964.

George was also an Integral member in starting the Hawaii International Billfish Tournament with his brother Phil Parker and Peter Fithian. Established in 1959, the HIBT is the longest running fishing tournament in Kona, and the second longest running fishing tournament in the world. It brings in teams from all across the world each year, and is known as the tournament that created the baseline for the standards and guidelines by which modern big game fishing tournaments follow.

There are many fishing stories about George over the course of his life. A few of Marlin Parker’s favorites are, one summer day in 1965, Marlin got a call from his dad on the CB. George was out on a holo holo day and took 4 of his buddies out to go fish. George normally ran 5 rods, and told his 4 friends to figure out how they wanted to handle the rod allocation when they got a bite. They insisted that he take one of the rods so that everyone would be responsible for 1 of the 5. As luck would have it, of course his rod is the first to take a strike. 11 hours later he gets the fish to the boat. As soon as they gaffed the fish, sharks started swarming and took minimum of 200 lbs from the belly. Although George’s grander in 1954 is the only verified grander to his name, this fish weighed in at 960 and would have easily eclipsed the 1000lb mark had it not been for the shark frenzy at the end of the fight.

Another story comes from 1998 at the end of George’s fishing career. His last boat was called the New Horizon, which he was fishing on when Marlin called him because Marlin had just caught 2 ahis in the porpoise. George drove over and Marlin witnessed him hook up on his first pass just behind the school of porpoise. At 86 years old he ended up catching and landing an 836lb marlin and even put the gaffs in that fish himself.

At 87 years old, at the urging of his Georges wife, Marlin had to finally take the keys away from him and get him off the boat.

George passed away at 96 years old in 2008. He lived an amazingly full life and his impact on modern day fishing and the Kona fishing community will never be forgotten.