Always get chance when you have live oama…

Screamah addiction lured Frank and me back to a deep water channel that came up empty the last two times we fished it.  Erik had been consistently hooking big papio and ulua with poppers off his small boat, and I stubbornly felt we could get something big to bite our live oama offering.

We launched in absolutely beautiful, glassy conditions and glided to the general area.  Hope began to fade as I scanned the fish finder’s blank screen. No bait fish near the surface and no white papio below.  Our live oama went on a tour of the likely looking reef drop offs and channels for the next 4 hrs.  Maybe the water was too calm and clear?  The wind began to pick up, and the tide surged, yet the only things grabbing my oama were reef outcrops and a fat puffer fish.  I got stuck 4 times, trolling over shallow water out of desperation, and the puffer was hooked so solidly in its lower lip that I cut off the hook. I was out of trolling rigs, and even bummed one off Frank, so I had to use my 20 lb fluoro main line to make a 2-hook trolling leader.

Frank got stuck a couple times also, but had devised an anchor system for his SUP and could retie his rigs while staying in place on the papa.  Brilliant!  I drifted a lot while retying rigs because I didn’t want to create an anchor trolley system for my kayak.  Frank continues to improve his fishing processes and had built a “rack-a-yak” washing station for me to clean my yak off when we land.  Maybe he can help me build the anchor trolley!

We were sun burnt, tired and really disappointed. Besides an omilu that Frank lost right at the net, we didn’t have anything to show for our efforts.  We positioned ourselves to let the current push us in, and as we entered shallow, murky water, I took  the fish finder’s transducer out of the water that was marking bait near the surface and Frank pulled up his live oama.  Even though I had never caught anything this close to shore, in such silty water, I left my oama in the water out of complete desperation.  Then the ratchet went off. The sound was faster than I would hear from a snag so it was actually a fish!  I got the rod out of the holder, felt a few surges and the fish came off. Ugh… Frank was too far away to hear the ratchet but did hear me yell “HOOKUP!!”.  He paddled over as I put the transducer back in the water.  5 feet deep and so silty we couldn’t see more than 2 feet down.  He quickly deployed his live oama and I put a new one on and retraced my route.

“HOOKUP!!”  Couldn’t believe I hooked something else and was overly excited.  I’m so used to saying “hookup” instead of “hanapa’a” after fishing so many years in SoCal, I guess.

Expected a white papio hunting in the very silty water yet it was a fat 1.5 lb omilu that took the back hook down in it’s gullet.  The fish bled during the hook extraction process so I kept it.  After Frank took this photo, he trolled the inside and when I tracked him down he was landing a similar sized omilu.  The fish finder said 3 feet!

We trolled the shallows some more but the bait fish were gone and so were the omilu. I guess God wanted us to each catch a fish and spare us the bolo head.

Erik fished shallow water on his bigger boat, and Kelly fished inside the break on his SUP. Both said the bite was very slow.  We’re thinking it was because the moon was still so big and the clear night skies let the fish feed at night.

And Frank and I learned that as long as you have live oama in the water, you always have a chance.