2018 Oama Season Prediction

It’s the second week of July and no sizeable schools of oama have been reported on Oahu.  Oama have been abundant the last few years at many of the usual spots and there were even nice piles at places that are normally hit or miss.  Seemed like a late start so I looked back at past fishing logs for comparison and consulted Kelly, our resident Oama Expert.

• 2014 – Normal start and stayed a little longer than expected. Arrived in late June and was mostly gone by October.  El Nino began late this year and water began to warm up.
• 2015 – Season started late and ended late. Oama came in late July and stayed at some places past December. El Nino in full effect.
• 2016 – Season started late and ended late. Oama came in late July and stayed through November. El Nino ended this year and water began to cool.
• 2017 – Normal start and slightly late ending. Oama came in late June and began to leave in October, at most places. La Nina brought a lot of rain.
• 2018 – The Summer season seems late.  The La Nina effect is ending and the water temps and current direction are returning to normal. Small aholehole, normally a spring time arrival, are showing up now.  The halalu have been slowly showing; normally they build up after the oama schools have been in for a while.  Small oama aren’t in at most places, but there have been trustworthy reports of a few actually being caught this week.  The pesky baby papio haven’t been around either, nor have the 8 to 10 inch omilu that arrive to feed off bait schools.

Will it be a late Start, late End kind of season like 2015 and 2016? Or will it be an “off” year where there won’t be much oama and the predators will be much harder to find? What do you guys think?

Our hopeful prediction is:  More oama come into the regular spots in the next few weeks, and are catchable by the end of July.  Papio, mainly omilu, should start raiding the oama piles by the middle/late August.

We’ll see how we do as Oama Prognosticators.