A friend, Bill, recently mentioned that the font on the posts was a little light and hard to read. All this time I thought it was the remaining cataract in my right eye that was causing that effect!
Please let me know if you have any other suggestions regarding the site. Mahalo for reading!
Normally we can’t kayak fish the Windward side in the Summer because of the prevailing Trade Winds. When the winds slow down during the Fall, ono, shibi ahi, mahi and kawakawa can be caught on live opelu. Last Friday, I checked a spot I hadn’t fished since last Fall, while a friend checked our normal Windward spot 5 miles away. Two days after that, friends checked the same spot I had fished on Friday.
Here’s what we experienced: Opelu was spotted but hard to catch. I didn’t catch any, but the two other guys caught 1 each and caught a kawakawa on it. Took more than an hr for their kawakawa to find the live bait.
I checked a 1 square mile area for bait and bottom fish and areas that are normally covered with juvenile fish in the Fall were barren. An area at 250ft that yielded ulua and kahala in the past had 6 inch opakapaka. At 1pm, after the big high tide turned, I stumbled upon active fish in 80ft of water. For more than an hr, ever drop of damashi got bit but the fish were either too small, the wrong species, or broke the line.
The hot bite was at a drop off that started in 50ft and extended past the 80ft mark. Omilu were at the deeper edge and so was a Lehi (Rusty Jobfish), which I thought was a pale wahanui. Another unusual fish that pulled line was a mongoose fish or cigar wrasse. I’ve caught these whipping the flats but had never seen one this big.
Stringers of yellow spot mixed with weke nono / weke ula came up but they were under a pound. When my damashi rig got busted off and an 11 inch weke nono came up alone, I kept it out of spite.
Even toau and taape hit the damashi, on the shallower side of the ledge. I killed the taape and kept the toau.
My neighbor Brian pan fried the toau and found it flaky and mild.
The 11 inch (fork length) weke nono was stuffed with baby fish, which led me to believe the frenzy of fish were attacking a school of baby critters. I filleted the weke nono for sashimi, and sadly didn’t get much yield after the bones were cut out. It was a little soft because I didn’t get a chance to dry age it in paper towels to take out the remaining moisture. Still was non-fishy with a nice, soft texture, one of my favorite fish to eat raw.
My Takeaways:
I’ve been using the trusty 11 inch carbon steel Rapala straight plier (top in photo) for years, both from shore and from the kayak. It’s kept my hand away from kaku and aha teeth (didn’t trust sharks to behave themselves) and has slowly corroded in places but I usually lose them before that gets too bad. It currently sells for $26 on Amazon but I got mine with my Rapala wholesale orders. I haven’t sold them in the Store because they will cost more to ship than our standard $5 rate.
Recently, I tossed them over the side of the kayak when they stuck to my magnetic Shark Bans strap on my ankle, and I flipped my leg over the side. So it was a good opportunity to try something new. I purchased the Booms 11.5 inch Hook Remover plier on Amazon ($18) and have used it once so far. I found it easier to dehook fish than the Rapala straight plier, because of the curved tip, but it has already started to corrode slightly. I’ll keep using Corrosion Block on it like I did with the Rapala straight plier.
Liking the idea of a curved or angled tip, I got a Rapala Stainless Steel Angled plier and a Rapala 6.5 inch Curved plier. I haven’t tested them on the water yet but pistol grip of the Angled plier makes it easy to quickly get the plier into position to pull a hook, and being stainless steel, hopefully it will resist corrosion longer. The little 6.5 inch Curved plier ($13 on Amazon) feels very nimble in the hand but being so short puts me closer to the sharp teeth. For the smaller, less toothy fish, it would be winner. I’ll try the Rapala Stainless Steel Angled plier on the kayak soon and I expect to love it. Downside is it’s bulkier because of the shape, and it sells for $30 on Amazon.
I was a little shocked to find out how much these pliers sell for now.
What kind of pliers do you folks use?
The two attacks that made the news were the Maui attack on the couple kayak fishing off Olowalu, Maui on May 22nd, and the attack on the surfer at Cromwells, near Diamond Head, Oahu on May 30th. Besides these attacks, surfers on Oahu reported sharks popping up near them to check them out. I got attacked by a tiger shark near Chinaman’s Hat, Oahu on May 12, 2023. Yet May isn’t officially recognized as an attack heavy month.
The Maui couple believe it was a 12ft plus tiger shark that grabbed onto their kayak and shook it before being punched and releasing the yak. The couple were shaken but unharmed.
The Cromwells surfer believes it was an 8ft Galapagos shark that bit both his legs. Fortunately he was able to paddle in, and paramedics were able to stop the bleeding and get him to the hospital where he is recovering nicely.
Olowalu, Maui is a known mating ground for tiger sharks, and the Black Point – Diamond Head area is known by divers and surfers to be sharky. But is it coincidental that these attacks occurred in May?
The DLNR Shark Incident Log hasn’t been updated since 12/9/2025 and doesn’t include my May 2023 attack, leading me to believe it’s far from comprehensive. The attacks logged are still pretty scary.
Casden Chow is a 9th grader on O’ahu and is an avid fisherman who fishes from shore and kayak.
Casden:
The last couple weeks, I’ve been able to go on a couple whipping trips after a depressing hiatus due to school. Summer is finally here, and the fishing is heating up! I wasn’t expecting too much on this first trip. I thought I’d just check out what was around, and it ended up being a good recon mission. I came across this reef edge that created a small pocket of calm water and saw sardine piles holed up there, so I threw on a tiny 10g jig that I thought would imitate them well. A nice little kaku ended up biting. It was great to get a little action after a long break. These were probably some of the first bait piles of the season.
This was mid-May, which is pretty early for bait to come in. I asked Scott about this, and he said that this year there’s an El Niño weather pattern, which brings larger warm water currents, more bait, and in turn predators to our waters. I also did some reading and found out that this could be one of the most intense “super” El Niños in a long time. To my surprise, Scott also told me that the oama were already in, so my next trip I wanted to test an interesting lure. This is an extremely realistic oama softbait. I rigged it with a belly-weighted EWG hook. I’m sure we’ve all heard “Some lures catch fish. Some catch fishermen”. They looked really great, so I was excited to see how well they worked. Would they actually swim well and catch fish, or were they just made to look pretty? The tackle shop owner I bought them from said people had gotten action just dunking them and letting them float in the current, pretty nuts!
The next spot I tried was super shallow, so I walked out to a reef ledge that dropped off into deeper water. The weather over the weekend was pretty rough. I was debating whether to go out, but you won’t catch anything sitting at home. At least if you’re out there, you have a chance. It was a bit of a battle with rough winds and waves on the ledge. I ended up getting pretty bad wind knots later in the day and got soaked. The lure was also light, which made things a little hard with the wind. I figured out that a sideways cast kept the line and lure close to the water without it getting blown back by the wind. I didn’t really know what the best way to work this lure was. If anyone has ideas about the best retrieve for this lure, please let me know! I ended up getting bit on a stop and burn retrieve. It was a nice little papio, probably around the 14-inch range.
The lure swims super well and looks like a real oama. Very good start to early summer fishing. I’m excited to see what is to come. Thanks, Scott for giving me the info about the oama and teaching me about these crazy weather patterns.
Editor’s Note: Casden is one of very few people that actually listened to my crazy El Nino ramblings!
Sardines are in, and there are some oama showing already. The early season predators, which tend to be larger than the regular season ones, are hitting the baits in low light.
Dust off your gear and go!
Hawaii was hit by 3 Kona Low storms, the last one in early April of this year. After losing power in the first storm for 6 hrs, I started looking around for home power backup solutions, and also got a submersible sump pump to minimize flooding. Here’s what had happened in that first Kona Low.
I already had a small gas generator but realized it was hard to use while a storm was still active, because it couldn’t be set within 20ft of any door or window, or in enclosed area like a garage, and had to be shielded from rain. So I started looking into power stations that could run a refrigerator for more than a day, and also run a microwave as needed.
This is what I learned in my power station deep dive. Two Tesla batteries alone that could be wired into your home’s electric grid, cost $10K, not including installation. Home Depot, Lowes and Costco were already sold out of portable power stations after the first Kona Low. Battery Bill’s had Anker power stations on 3 to 7 week back order and were marking them up $800 from their MSRP price, presumably for delivery to Hawaii. Watt hours (wh) is the indication of the capacity of the power station, and 3000 wh was what I thought would be enough to run the fridge and microwave for a day or so.
So I took a chance and ordered a Bluetti AC200PL from the online seller who made the little lithium iron battery I use to power my fish finder. My fish finder battery, which they shipped for free in 2021, continues to work well, so I had only positive experiences with them. Buying a lithium iron 63lb power station and having it shipped from California required a lot of faith, but I didn’t have any alternatives.
The highly rated Bluetti AC200PL put out 2304 watt hrs of power when fully charged, which is on the less than what I was looking for, but was the only unit I could find that could be shipped for a reasonable price. The sale price was $949 and shipping to Hawaii was $222. The total price of $1172 including shipping to Hawaii was much cheaper than the prices for comparable units I had seen on Oahu. The AC200PL could be charged from an electrical outlet, from a gas generator or from a solar panel, in a time frame quicker than most power stations. It weighed 63lb but had ergonomic carry handles.
It took 17 days for the power station to be delivered by USPS, and I helped the mail carrier carry the unwieldy box down from the truck. I don’t know how she would have done it alone. I used the power station once so far, initially during a small outage and beyond. It ran the fridge for 12 hrs and 15 mins, and we used the microwave for breakfast, lunch and dinner before it ran out of juice. The microwave sucked a lot of power whereas our fridge really didn’t draw much as it cycled off. That was a realistic test, opening the fridge to get food/drinks, and using the microwave liberally. If I needed more run time, I would have to recharge the Bluetti with the gas generator outside, and that is estimated to take about 2 hrs. The 63lb weight wasn’t a problem because of the way the handles are set, but if I needed to, I could have had another person carry one side.
During the 3rd Kona Low, we got a lot of rain at once and water was pooling in our drain ditch. Water doesn’t drain out of our yard well because of the flat slope, so I used the 1hp, 4500 gal per hr sump pump with flat 1.5 inch drainage hose I purchased off Amazon.
While the pump couldn’t keep up with a heavy downpour, it did take the water out of the yard when the rain slowed.
I feel better knowing we can now run the fridge and microwave for 12hrs during an outage, and can help move water out of our yard.
Since I’ve only used the Bluetti power station and sump pump once, I’m holding off on recommending them but just wanted you guys to know of these storm prep options.
We are officially in an El Nino and could be hit with some tropical storms in the Fall. Good to be as prepared as possible.
Be safe!
This past week’ there was a forecast for light wind and rain, and then slightly stronger wind and no rain the following day. I picked the light wind and rain since fish have usually bitten well on the dark rainy days. Didn’t work out that way. I felt queasy from the chaotic rolling swells and the fishing was slow except for certain periods of the tide. Here’s the short recap.
I wore a light rain jacket all day under my PFD and since it was mostly dark and overcast, I didn’t overheat. Starting off on the bottom of a big rising tide, I expected the fish to chew like they did on the previous trip but that didn’t happen. I caught a nice 2lb yellow spot papio early, and then didn’t get anything good as I went deeper.
At 180ft, on a friend’s mark, I saw a small bait ball near the bottom and actually brought up a big opelu. Opelu has been scarce over the last few trips because they are spawning and not balled up in the shallows. I put the opelu out with a sliding 2.5 oz tungsten weight, and dropped the damashi down again. Something, probably a big papio, broke me off. Then the opelu got hit and I fought the fish for more than 5 second before the 2 hooks pulled. It ran smoothly like a pelagic, but that might be wishful thinking. I couldn’t catch anymore opelu, and had been feeling lousy in the rolling chop, so I started hitting the shallower damashi spots to find calmer water.
In about 150ft, at a spot I had caught a small uku previously on live opelu, I hooked something that pulled line and busted me off on 20lb damashi. I dropped a jig down but they didn’t want to hit anything bigger, so I kept working shallower. The normal productive spots weren’t holding and I was getting a little concerned with only the yellowspot in the bag. Inside 100ft I brought up an invasive toau (blacktail snapper) and a lai (leatherback), which I kept for a friend. I don’t like handling lai because of its venomous spines but carefully clipped them off after I had brained it. Friends tell me big lai makes good sashimi, and toau is good fried.
A small uku paired with a baby nunu came up next so I moved further inside.
Still didn’t have the fish I was hoping for, but then got lucky/blessed as I returned to the mark the yellowspot was at in the morning.
Two moana kali came up on the damashi followed by a slightly larger one. Whew, finally got enough kau kau for friends. Sorry for the rain on the camera lens.
I checked some other areas on the way in, and they were all void of good fish. Pretty slow day but got enough to share and didn’t fully get sick!
My friend Jon from the Big Island was back so he was able to compare yellow spot papio to omilu sashimi, and steam another moana kali after I took a fillet of each fish off for my dad to enjoy.
One batch of the yellowspot sashimi was garnished with a thin coat of sesame oil and alae salt, then dipped in Chinese mustard and shoyu. The other batch was left plain. Jon found the yellowspot sashimi to be softer than omilu, non-fishy, and delicious. It reminded him of the California yellowtail we both chased in our years up in SoCal.
The moana kali was steamed and then topped with shoyu, oyster sauce, peanut oil and garlic. He found it moist with soft, flaky meat.
What my dad got was simpler in presentation and taste but to his liking. 🙂
I’m waiting on photos from my friends’ fish prep, hint, hint.
With the Nearshore bite already ramping up, I realized I’d better start putting the non-tungsten jigs up in the Store. We haven’t been able to test each style – size – color combination yet, but every jig cast from shore and dropped from the kayak got bit. Our boat tester hasn’t been able to drop the heavy 180g and 240g rear weighted jigs to the depths yet.
The price of raw tungsten made it economically unfeasible to order more jigs, so I picked some jig shapes that resembled our bait fish, and had them painted to resemble oama, nehu and opelu. We’ll initially keep the price down so you folks can try these jigs and if a fish takes them, it won’t hurt as much. They are priced lower than any other jig you’ll find, and much lower than casting lures.
Paint eventually peeled from sharp teeth, but that’s to be expected with lead jigs. The coating is more resistant on the more expensive tungsten jigs because tungsten is so much harder a metal than lead.
You can find the jigs here. I’ll eventually add the full inventory of styles – sizes – colors and get them all tested.
Last fished in January. February to mid-March was too windy, late March into mid-April was plagued with 3 Kona Lows and brown water. Finally got out last week after almost 11 weeks of dry dock. Kayak fished with a friend, Bill, I had been trying to sync up with for a few years. We started at the bottom of the tide with the tide peaking in the late afternoon. It was really calm, so I didn’t expect a good bottomfish bite.
Bill, ever the optimist, said “you never know until you go”, and that he often gets his pelagic bites at the bottom of the tide. He met a new friend on the way out who gave him some left over live akule, so Bill took them out deep to entice the big fish. I wanted to check the shallow bottom spots on the way out with the trusty damashi / sabiki rig. I couldn’t find opelu but a surprise nabeta came up adjacent to the reef. That was followed up by a beautiful moana kali.
Bill radio’d in that he caught a yellow spot papio and a keeper uku so I left the shallows and went to my 120ft spot. I hooked a 4lb omilu on the 2.25″ CHL Sprat soft plastic, which was unusual. I wanted to catch fish for some good friends visiting from the Big Island, and had promised another friend fish, so I kept the omilu. Normally I release them so they can give the shore guys a go.
I moved deeper, hitting spots I had caught yellow spots and uku, and a hard fighting white papio came up on the damashi. A friend from church really likes the crunch of white papio sashimi so I kept this one also.
Since papios were coming up on spots I normally don’t catch them, I dropped a jig down on a known ulua/kahala deep spot, thinking something else might be home. The 120g Chubby jig got hit on the 2nd drop. It was a 10lb plus kahala and was released.
Since it was so calm and I wasn’t finding the target fish, I decided to check a spot a friend did well at, and traveled half a mile further south than I had ever fished. I didn’t have the mark saved on my fish finder but I did save it on my Navionics phone app, so I used that to get to the area. I marked what looked like a bait ball down deep but when I dropped the damashi, I hooked another white papio, that was getting close to ulua size.
I kept this one for a friend who lives in the area and finds creative ways to eat papio and ulua. I was so over catching these brutish jacks. Or so I thought. Next drop was an even bigger fish I couldn’t land. I went back to the shallows to find some tasty goat fish but couldn’t even pull that off. I got bit off by toothy fish and my Bixpy battery was getting low.
Meanwhile Bill was about a half mile further out and he found a nabeta, and then another good sized yellow spot. I thought of heading back out but could see my battery draining so I headed in. The battery died about 3/4 mile from the launch and I had to paddle unassisted. Good thing I wasn’t further out.
So after not fishing for so long, it turned out to be a very nice day with steady action. Bill got all the good bottom fish and I got my line stretched by jacks, but it was just so enjoyable to be on the water with such a nice guy.
Here’s the video of the action if you haven’t seen it in the previous post.
My friend Jon from the Big Island, who worked as a Tamashiro Market fish cutter in high school, and enjoyed making great tasting seafood dishes for us, deep fried the nabeta and topped it with garlic crunchy oil.
He let the omilu rest and on Day 3, fried the omilu skin, then he fried the papio fillet with salt, pepper and flour, garnished with tartar sauce, saving some for sashimi. I didn’t know the sashimi would have that nice pink coloration. He said it was mild and a little crisp since it was only 3 days out of the water.
The moana kali was steamed with ginger, garlic, chinese parsley, shiitake mushrooms, sesame oil, mirin and sprinkled with red alae salt. After it was done steaming, he drizzled hot peanut oil and garlic over it. To top it off, he spooned a mixture of oyster sauce and shoyu over the fish. The fish was on the small side, so it flaked off into small pieces and loose bones had to be carefully removed.
I suspected those papio were staging to spawn but none had mature gonads. What was also odd was their stomachs were empty. I wonder why there were so many around, hitting such small lures? Maybe all the runoff caused shrimps and crustaceans to fill the deep reef?
Resumed kayak fishing after an almost 3 month hiatus. A more detailed report to follow. Started at the bottom of the low tide and fished into the big rising tide. Was very surprised to hook omilu to 4lb and white papio past 10lb that broke me off, all on 1.5″ to 2.25″ Completely Hooked Lures soft plastics fished on 15lb to 25lb damashi rigs.
I’ve never had so many papio hit the damashi, and those big fish seemed to have pushed the reef fish away from my productive spots. Maybe the papio are staging to spawn inshore soon, and are waiting for the halalu and oama to arrive? Could be an epic inshore season!
Here’s a video showing how the fish consistently got larger as the day went on.
From Wednesday, March 11 to Sunday, March 15 the State of Hawaii endured a very strong “Kona Low” storm. In terms I can understand, that means a storm system that moves very slowly, dumping lots of rain in the clockwise direction that hits the islands from the south west. The risk of these kinds of storms is that more rain is dropped because the moisture is coming from the warmer south than the normal cooler north, and areas on the north east side of the mountains get stronger winds because the wind speeds up downhill after hitting from the south west.
The storm system first hit Kauai, then Oahu and worked its way down to Maui and the Big Island, affecting those islands on the west side of the island chain more because the storm lingered longer. Maui and Big Island got 20 to 30 inches of rain during this period. Oahu got 8 to 20 inches of rain, depending on the area.
“At the storm’s peak, more than 100,000 Hawaiian Electric customers were without power and by Sunday afternoon, more than 32,000 were still without electricity. But no deaths were reported, the Governor Green said, and only two people were seriously injured. “
“In Honolulu, the amount of rainfall in February and the first half of March hasn’t been this high since at least 2000, totaling at least 12.25 inches. The previous high set in 2017 was roughly two inches less. Friday was the single rainiest day in the state’s capital in more than two decades, with 5.51 inches of rain. At Makapuʻu Beach on Oʻahu, 81-mph wind gusts were recorded on Friday. Kāneʻohe Bay experienced 70-mph gusts.“
Even the economically critical Waikiki area took some cracks.
While the flood and wind damage was very bad in some areas, we thank God that no one died.
Our property, on the South side of Oahu, doesn’t get much rain normally but is prone to flooding in Kona Low conditions because the ground is graded to the back, and doesn’t drain onto the street. There’s an easement / drain behind the homes and if that fills up, our property can’t drain out. I asked a neighbor to remove obstructions blocking the drain, and removed the plants and debris prior to the start of the storm.
I also widened our yard drainage and sand bagged a garage that floods if the drainage backs up. All those steps plus the fact that the rain wasn’t super heavy over a short period of time, allowed the drain system to take away the water.
During the peak of the heavy rain on Friday and Saturday, I constantly checked Weather Underground to see how much rain was predicted in the next few hours, and watched their radar map.
Also checked NOAA’s recent rainfall totals .
I was so focused on the flood risk I didn’t think about the strong winds that took down transmission lines for power, phone and cable.
We lost Spectrum internet service and power for about 6hrs on Friday night. Friends didn’t have power from mid-day Friday to Sunday morning. A few areas still didn’t have power on Monday.
The HECO Outage Map was helpful in determining when they estimated power would be restored.
Losing power meant we’d be in the dark if we didn’t have a bunch of Ledlenser rechargeable lights (love those!) and couldn’t microwave the food that would soon spoil in the fridge. We kept the fridge shut and just ate bread and honey. 🙂 When I opened the fridge after the power was restored about 6 hrs later, it was at 43 degrees. Food at 40 degrees or warmer begins to spoil after a couple of hrs. so were right at the edge of our food being suspect.
People without food or a means to cook food had a hard time finding read-to-eat food because so many businesses were without power. Hawaii Kai Costco was closed on Sunday because their perishables had to be thrown out. Sadly, this happens often at that location. Longs stores weren’t open because their Point of Sales systems were down.
I didn’t expect to be without power for more than 4 hrs. With a greater chance of tropical storms this Fall (an El Nino is probable), power outages are highly likely. A gas generator is cumbersome to use in a rain storm so I’m considering getting a Power Station / Power Bank (basically a large lithium battery with outlets) that can run a fridge for a day and a half, and power a microwave a few times. Since online stores don’t seem to ship those to Hawaii, there are only a few stores like Lowes and Battery Bills that have them available.
I will also use my many Arctic Ice reusable blocks in our roto-molded coolers with the most perishable foods. That should keep them colder than the unpowered fridge.
We had partially charged our cell phones before the power went out, but luckily, the Ledlenser lanterns also work as power banks that can charge a phone. I’ll make sure all our rechargeable emergency items are fully charged next time.
Update 5/14/26: Storm Prep Pt 2. Purchased a Home Power Station and Sump Pump
Freddie has taught me a lot about the different Hawaiian fish species, and how they are best eaten. He also makes a killer Oxtail Soup. Here’s the straight forward instructions.
Freddie:
Ingredients:
Optional sides:
Sam’s Club sells oxtails in a vacuum sealed package. Two packs will feed up to five depending on the people eating! Main ingredients besides the oxtail are: sea salt 1/4-1/2 cup, five to eight pieces dried star anise, Knorr chicken base to taste, Chinese parsley and ginger ( as much as you like ).
If you have a 10 quart pressure cooker, cooking time is around one hour and thirty minutes, until oxtails are tender. If not, a regular pot will do, but cook time will be more than three hours. Fill pot around half way or enough water to cover oxtails. Bring to a hard boil and add salt, star anise, and a piece of crushed ginger. Cook until tender.
Once tender, use the Knorr chicken base to season your broth. You can also add more water at this time as some may have evaporated. Grate remaining ginger, more the merrier. FYI, use a spoon to clean the skin off of the ginger. Chop Chinese parsley.
Other optional sides are: won bok or napa cabbage, choi sum, kai choi or mustard cabbage, peanuts, and shiitake mushrooms.
Always remember to taste as you cook and never add too much salt or seasoning!
Adding kimchi changes the flavor. If you want, can add kimchi base and gochujang sauce for a bit of a kick.
Since I’ve been mainly kayak fishing, I have been using small hooks to tie onto sabiki/damashi rigs, hooks for my live bait rigs, and jig assist hooks. I’ve used Owner, Gamakatsu and VMC hooks for a variety of purposes, BKK and Shout mainly as jig assist hooks, and Maruto as gold damashi hooks. Here’s my review of the hooks I have used based on my limited experience with them.
Owner and Gamakatsu are the two best known and respected hook brands in the world. They are made in Japan and are the most expensive brands you can buy domestically. Both are chemically sharpened, and are extremely sharp out of the bag, but if the hook tip gets dinged, it loses it’s sharpness and corrodes.
Owner hooks tend to be thicker and stronger than Gamakatsu, yet are made to be as thin as possible for the desired strength. If you want a hook that will penetrate the fish’s mouth and won’t bend out, this is the brand for you. I use the Gorilla Live Bait hooks as the front hook of my opelu, and the Flyliner Live Bait hook on my larger sabiki/damashi sets. They haven’t failed yet.
In general, Gamakatsu hooks are thinner and sometimes have a shorter shank than Owner hooks. They are more of a finesse hook but are still extremely sharp and strong for their thickness. I primarily use the thin wire Live Bait hooks for my medium sabiki/damashi rigs and they hook fish very effectively and unhook nicely despite being offset.
Like the Owner Flyliner hooks, I’ve never had a hook break or bend while landing a strong fish.
VMC hooks, made in France, are significantly cheaper than Owner and Gamakatsu. They are also chemically sharpened but aren’t quite as sharp as Owner and Gamakatsu, possibly due to the fact that the hook point isn’t as fine. You can resharpen VMC hooks and they don’t seem to corrode as quickly as Owner and Gamakatsu. VMC hooks often have a heavy duty version and are very strong. I use the Heavy Duty Live Bait hook as the front hook on my bait, and the Inline Single 4X as the trailing hook. I’ve never had either open up but I do need to replace the hooks after a few uses because they eventually get dull.
BKK hooks are made in China using Japanese materials. They are known to be very sharp, strong and resist corrosion well. I mainly use their assist hooks and they’ve worked so well that we sell them in our Store. I like that the assist cord is pliable enough to allow the hook to fall nicely, yet strong enough to not get cutoff. I have used the assist hooks for many trips and the hooks have not dulled or corroded. I haven’t had as good experiences with Owner and Gamakatsu assist hooks and don’t use those brands anymore.
Shout assist hooks are made in Japan to exacting standards. I really like how pliable the assist cords are, and the hooks themselves are thin and very sharp, allowing for maximum penetration.
The thin, light hooks are not made for very strong fish, however. This ulua stretched open the Shout assist hook I was using although it didn’t snap.
Maruto hooks are made in Japan and the shops here import them. I use the gold MZ style hooks for my light sabiki/damashi rig because it is believed that opelu like the gold flash. The hooks are sharp but break under pressure and rust after one use.
If you have the budget for Owner and Gamakatsu hooks, use them and you will have peace of mind that they won’t fail you. If you want to save some money and still have sharp, strong hooks, go with VMC. In my opinion you can’t go wrong with BKK. They also make very strong jig head hooks and treble hooks. Shout assists are the best assists I’ve used for catching fish but you have to make sure you have a hook strong enough for the fish you may hook. Maruto gold hooks are inexpensive, disposable hooks that work well when used appropriately.
My neighbor Brian has had his culinary creations featured on this website, and it turns out he has a buddy Ravi who shares his passion for prepping delicious fish dishes. Ravi smoked the recent large opelu I had caught. and they came out awesome.
My sister did a simple pan fry of the malu, highlighting the clean, flaky meat. Here are the simple steps to prepare these two fish. And here’s the report detailing how these fish were caught.
Brine, pat dry, refrigerate for an hour to allow smoke flavoring to adhere better. Smoke at 180 degrees for an hour. Finish with higher heat to brown the outside, if needed. Should come out moist on the inside.
Salt, garlic powder, dredge in flour. Pan fry. Malu is moist and flaky with a delicate taste. The skin crisped up nicely with a reddish orange color.
Last week I fished a calm day on the Windward side that had chaotic lumpy cross swells and the fishing was extremely slow except for opelu biting all day. This week, the wind and the swells died down, and the water was so clear that divers on jet skis were racing out to check the spots normally undiveable.
I didn’t expect the bottom fish to bite well but they did. The big, desirable keepers were smart enough to stay away, though. Big opelu bit all day again. Here’s the quick recap.
I got out to my first spot and hooked a solo opelu. I lost the school after securing it, so I put it out on a weighted line and went deeper looking for bottom fish. The undesirables bit – big taape, nunu (trumpetfish), hagi, moana so I moved further out. I was able to catch more opelu but the opelu out on the weighted line only got its stomach removed.
On the way to the deep ulua / kahala jigging spot at 200ft I came across some good marks and dropped down. A juvenile uku came up on the damashi so I released it and dropped again, hoping for a much larger version. Something hit the damashi and pulled drag, and after maybe 30 seconds it broke off the 25lb hook line. It didn’t feel like an ulua or kahala so I was intrigued.
I put on a 30lb damashi rig, the heaviest I carry, and dropped again.
A juvenile uku and a juvenile weke nono came up. The right species, just not the right size.
Two large opelu, normally line shy, came up on the 30lb rig with large Completely Hooked Lures Sprats. On the next drop I felt the tail beats of opelu and then the line surged down. I fought what I believe was a shark for less than a minute and the hook line cut, but an opelu came up on the top hook.
I put the live opelu out again on the weighted rig but it didn’t get touched. The bite shut down and all I had in the fish bag were fairly large opelu. I checked my shallow bottom fish spots on the way in, and the small undesirables bit. Nothing good like keeper weke nono, yellow spot papio, moana kali.
At the shallow reef shelf on the way in, I dropped down the damashi as a 4th Quarter – Hail Mary attempt and hooked a malu (single spot goatfish). They don’t get too big, and they have very clean, flaky meat, so this one was added to the fish bag.
Summary: The big opelu bit again, predators weren’t balling them up, and the small bottom fish bit in the calm conditions but the smarter, larger bottom fish didn’t. I’m guessing, since the conditions were so calm, the food chain wasn’t activated. And am also guessing that the cross swells during the previous trip just scattered the bottom fish and didn’t set up feeding lanes.
This separate cooking post details how the opelu were smoked, and how the malu was lightly pan-fried. Both came out winnahs!
I fished 2 days after the New Moon on the Windward side, which should have been a productive moon phase/tide, and the wind was under 8mph mostly, but there was a weird lumpy rolling East swell and occasional lumps from other directions. With all the surface disturbance, and over cast skies, I would have expected the bite to be phenomenal for bottom fish.
Opelu were at the first stop of the morning, they bit well, and I loaded up with 5. When I dropped the damashi deeper for the good goatfish, there wasn’t much action, which was unusual for the morning. I checked a few more spots before heading deeper to troll the opelu, and they were void too. Nothing hit the live opelu until I dropped it, with a 2.5oz tungsten sliding weight, to the bottom at 150ft.
I hooked something that pulled line initially but came up, which was a good sign. Near that spot was where ulua were wrecking me on the previous trip. Turned out to be a 2lb uku which surprised me because it tried to eat a 10 inch opelu, and punched over its weight class.
Hoping I found the uku honey hole, I dropped another live opelu down and a bigger fish thumped it. The fish pulled line and surged so I was expected a good sized uku, but instead it was a 10lb kahala, probably an almaco/kampachi. I thought about keeping it, but it probably had spaghetti worms and a slight chance of ciguatera so I released it.
Not wanting to battle any more kahala or ulua, I paddled away from the area with another opelu out and ended up over the small opakapaka / weke nono sandy grounds.
I found some but they were too small to keep so I headed back to the shallow bottom fish spots I had checked in the morning.
The bottom fish bite was still extremely slow, with only a few taape, nunu (trumpetfish) and moana hitting. Those are the species that always seem to bite when the better fish don’t. But, big opelu still bit, along with a 1lb kawakawa that came up tail wrapped.
I’m still trying to figure out what caused the fish to have lockjaw, and can only surmise that the larger North swell that rolled through a few days prior moved the food chain out, and the cross swells that day were making things uncomfortable for the fish down there.
I am grateful for the fish caught out of the Westside on the previous two trips that went to holiday parties, but wanted to catch fish larger than 3lbs. My plan was to use larger soft plastic lures from Completely Hooked Lures, to deter the smaller fish from biting, and drag live opelu around to find a stray mahi mahi or kawakawa. If that failed, I’d drop the 120g tungsten knife jig down in deeper water since I have yet to land a fish on it.
I have been using the Sprat (top lure) and it catches everything including large opelu, but still attracts smaller moana and smaller taape. The Gobie and Grub have thicker profiles so hopefully that are too much of a meal for small fish. That funny little lure on the bottom is a prototype that Landon of Completely Hooked Lures sent over with my order, to try on picky opelu.
I took out a damashi rod rigged for opelu with a CHL Minnow (smaller version of the Sprat) and the prototype little lure on 15lb. I had a second damashi rod rigged with Sprats, Gobies and Grubs for the larger fish, on 25lb.
At the first stop where I normally target moana kali, there were opelu bait balls around and sure enough the lighter damashi rig brought up opelu on both the Minnow and the little lure. The opelu bite was good and by the time I had 6 in my bait tube, there wasn’t anything else good on the bottom. So I headed over to a slightly deeper spot that has held small uku, and big jacks. On the way over, in what I think is a flat hard bottom, was a layer of something right off the bottom. I dropped the larger damashi rig down and a 2lb omilu came up. That was very unusual, finding omilu not on a rocky reef. I released it and caught another omilu right after. Not wanting to be catching hard fighting fish I have to release, I moved on to the uku/ulua spot, but just caught the rubbish fish (trumpetfish and taape) that bite when the conditions are too calm.
So I put a live opelu out with a sliding tungsten bullet weight in front of it, and towed it out a mile. Something took chunks of it behind its head and killed it but was too small to take the hooks. I put another one out and something else took chunks in the stomach area. Odd that those fish didn’t chip away at the entire fish but that was an indication that pelagics weren’t in that specific area.
I reached a spot in 180ft where kahala have hit jigs in the past, and I dropped the mangled opelu down to the bottom. Sure enough something strong grabbed it, and my drag’s strike setting wasn’t strong enough to stop it from rocking me. Assuming there were more kahalas around I dropped down the 120g tungsten knife jig. It took 45 seconds to reach the bottom, and I could barely feel any resistance jigging it back up. On the 4th drop it got hammered and I had the drag set very tight so I wouldn’t get rocked. The fish was so strong and the jig rod’s butt dug into my side. I was huffing and puffing but couldn’t stop to rest because the fish would then turn its head and swim down to rock me. After less than 3 minutes, which felt like 10 mins, a white ulua (GT) surfaced. I had let it depressurize about 20ft below the surface so it was able to swim down fine. Here’s the truncated video of that battle. If you’re interested in purchasing the 120g and 180g tungsten knife jigs, you can find them in the Store here. They’re pricey because they are tungsten, but they won’t tire you out until something big hits it.
I rested up a bit after that jig battle, and motored back to that big fish spot and dropped another chunk of fresh opelu on the bait rod, with the strike setting set higher. Sure enough another fish hit it and I was in for another grueling battle. A slightly bigger ulua came up that I released. Convinced there was nothing else down there but strong fish I didn’t want to fight, I put another live opelu out and headed back to shallower uku spot. Up to this point I just had opelu in my bait tube and nothing in my fish bag.
Finally, I landed a decent sized yellow spot papio after going through moana and big taape.
It took a while to catch a second yellow spot, right after a big opelu was hooked on the big damashi rig, and it was time to head in.
So I struck out with the live bait but the larger damashi lures did seem to attract larger fish, and I was finally able to fish deep enough to catch something on the 120g tungsten knife jig. Pretty good fishing despite very calm conditions and a junk moon phase.
The yellow spot ended up weighing 2lb and 2lb 10oz after being bled, and both were males developing sperm. Maybe all those papio were on the bottom getting ready for a spawn?
My neighbor Brian turned the larger yellow spot papio into something almost too beautiful eat.
I was hoping to catch fish to give for New Year’s. Was too windy anywhere else, and school was still out, making the drive manageable, so Westside was the only viable option. Westside surprisingly provided tasty goats on the previous trip so I was cautiously optimistic.
Friends told me to go deeper forlarger weke nono, and further south for jig action so that was the plan but I stopped at a pretty reliable 170ft spot on the way out and a yellow spot papio, less than 2lb, came up on the damashi rig with Completely Hooked Lures (CHL) soft plastics.
On the next drop I hooked an even stronger papio but this one had brighter blue fins so I released it. I left biting fish to keep going south and deep.
A few spots later, a 1.5lb weke nono hit the CHL Arrow. Then things really slowed for the next hour as I checked the 240ft depth, then kept going south.
I finally stumbled on some nabeta. The first was small, but the small ones are the best eating because their meat is soft, and they deep fry nicely without requiring a lot of oil. The 2nd was a fairly thick one.
Only caught and released another omilu on the south end of this trip, and made my way back. Another 1.5 weke nono was caught, and as I was getting close to the launch I checked that first 170ft spot as the rain and wind picked up. Something that felt like an omilu slammed the damashi rig but I was stoked to see a good sized yellow spot come up.
Though the fish were on the small side, Westside provided again, for 3 different families. What’s interesting is that there aren’t the small, pesky fish that slow me down on the Windward side. Maybe I need to use larger soft plastics on the Windward side to deter those moana, taape, small puffers, lizardfish, etc? And I still need to find the larger weke nono that reside in Westside deeper water.
We were invited to a party the day after Christmas and the host loves to cook and eat fish. The only location and weather window was Westside, 4 days before the party. It was a long shot, since I never caught much on that side, but I had to try.
I’ve never caught opelu there, so I didn’t even plan to drag a live bait. It was gonna strictly be a damashi and jig mission. About an hour in, I finally felt the strong pull of a weke nono on the damashi rod, and up came one about 1.5lb. The school had moved on but about 10 minutes later I brought up a surprise moana kali. I’ve never caught one there before and my host friend wanted something to steam. It wasn’t big, under 2 lbs, but would be big enough for people to taste it’s premium flesh. It tried to jump back in the water, but luckily was still hooked.
At this point I had tied my best effort on the Westside, 2 keepers. But that wasn’t enough for the party so I pressed on. I hit spots I had caught fish before and eventually caught 2 more weke nono. With 3 weke nono, and 1 moana kali in the bag, things were looking pretty good so I hit my Hail Mary spot on the way in, that has produced on the last 4 trips. I think the spot works because it’s overcast and windy by the time I start heading in, and the fish there aren’t as wary.
Sure enough, I felt a good pull but the fish came off. Next drop, the biggest weke nono of the day, by a few ounces, came up. The other two damashi branches and the lead were busted off so I dropped a 100g lead jig down and it got pulled but I suspect the jig was a little big for the smallish weke nono to swallow.
The fish were between 1.5 and 2lb; enough for the party so I cut the largest weke nono up for sashimi for my dad to eat on Christmas Day.
The 3 remaining weke nono made some clean tasting sashimi pieces; firmer than you’d expect goatfish to be. The sashimi was dipped in white shoyu from Japan, and wasabi and was delicious with no fishy aftertaste. The weke nono scraps were happily eaten by my sister’s cats.
The host, Daren made angled slits in the moana kali, to hold ginger slices, then stuffed it with chopped lup cheong, green onion, parsley and sprinkled with salt and pepper. He steamed it on the stove, in his fancy steamer pan shaped to hold fish. After about 15 minutes he checked it and it was done. He topped it off with peanut oil with the flair of an accomplished chef.
I’m so grateful that God provided from a spot I normally don’t catch much. Friends at the party thought the steamed moana kali was the best steamed fish they ever had. The texture was firm, yet melted in your mouth. And Daren’s seasonings erased any hint of fishyness for me. 🙂