A community of fishers sharing knowledge and Aloha
The shark attack happened last May and didn’t make it into Discovery Channel’s Shark Week last year but it will be part of the “Caught! When Sharks Attack” episode this week. It will air Thursday July 11th at 6PM Hawaii Time, 9PM ET and PT. I haven’t seen the episode yet so I don’t know anything about the show but if it never streams, this will be the only chance to watch it. Just FYI.
We first looked into having tungsten jigs made in 2020 when it became apparent that jigs matching very small bait fish would get bitten better than larger, slower falling jigs. Vertical and slow pitch jigs were still catching on in the US, and interest in our compact tungsten jigs didn’t take off until 2023.
Then, the Southern Cal sportboat guys fishing for bluefin tuna at night discovered that the normally wary fish were suckers for heavy 3 inch jigs dropped 200ft under the boat, and demand for those jigs sky rocketed. Guys were spending more than $40 on a glowing 180g tungsten jig. I found out about this when the guys started asking me if I could get heavier jigs in. No one in the US had these sized jigs and soon the Japan-based stores raised their prices and ran out of inventory.
I reached out to the company that had made jigs for me in the past and they informed me that the price of tungsten powder was at a 10 yr high because China placed safety restrictions on the manufacturing of tungsten products, and the demand for tungsten products (not just fishing jigs) had spiked. In order to have more jigs made I would have to place a large order, and pay a significantly greater price than in the past. My little business didn’t have the capital for that so I reached out to a US distributor of Japanese fishing lures. He said that the Japanese jig companies are charging so much for tungsten jigs now, he’d have to charge a price for them that no dealer would want to pay.
Similar to buying gold at an all time high, this doesn’t look like an opportune time to buy more tungsten jigs.
I wanna thank the SoCal guys who helped me understand how they are brazing solid rings and assembling very strong assist hooks to land 100lb plus fish. Hopefully I can procure some heavy compact jigs that work for you.
Matthew Ikeda is back with a much needed shoreline catch report and bait update!
I hope you all are doing well. It’s been a while since my last write-up in August. With a busy senior year, I haven’t had as much time to fish as I’d like, but I always keep some time to go fishing. With that being said, let’s get to the catch report.
The O’io bite was on fire for the back end of 2023, all the way into January and February. The winter bite wasn’t slow at all, and I was picking up 2-3 O’io per trip pretty regularly. Unfortunately that all changed around April, when the O’io seemed to vacate the flats. At times, I faced multiple whitewash trips in a row, something that I hadn’t seen since I was first learning how to catch O’io. Several of my best spots had suddenly turned dry, and I couldn’t find the reason no matter how hard I tried. One of the only successful trips I had from April-June was one I ventured all the way out to the breakers, attempting to sneak up on the O’io in the choppy whitewash. I caught 4 that day. I don’t normally fish that close to the breakers, but I figured that I should try since nothing else was working. Perhaps the O’io playing hard-to-get is a result of increased pressure, or some seasonal change that I don’t understand. All I know is that the O’io bite has been much slower than last year at the same time.
Interestingly enough, my best catch of 2024 so far came on a day I probably shouldn’t have been fishing. On that day, I brought my friends and a couple of dunking rods to the beach, hoping to get them on an O’io or two. I also brought a “just in case” rod rigged with a grub and jighead in the event that I had some sight fishing opportunities. Before I had even set up the first dunking pole, I saw a huge O’io swimming in the shallows. I quickly grabbed the “just in case” pole and ran into the water, stalking the fish from a distance. I hadn’t sightfished in a while and I realized that it was my first real chance at a nice fish in months. Luckily, it was a windy day so the splash was muffled when my lure hit the water. The O’io pretty much rushed over to the lure and swallowed it. I was on.
After a pretty tense 10 minute fight, I was able to see that it was pretty darn good for a “welcome back” fish. I never carry a scale on me, but judging from the size, it was probably a double digit fish. I landed the O’io, took a few pictures with my friends, and sent it back on its way. After a few long months of low to no action, I caught a near PB O’io on a trip where I hadn’t even planned to fish. It was high noon, the tide wasn’t great, and I hadn’t even bothered to retie my FG knot from a few trips back. Sometimes fish just seem to have their ways of doing things.
As for everything else, I’ve been doing a bunch of stream bass fishing over the last few months. It’s been a great way to cool down after tennis practice and school, and the bass always seem willing to bite. If you’d like to try sometime, make sure you prepare some sort of defense against mosquitoes. I usually just wear long sleeves and long pants.
I’m hoping that it will be a great summer of fishing as I look to transition into more Papio fishing and maybe even plugging (I really want to get my first shore Ulua before college). It doesn’t seem like the Oama and Halalu are quite in yet, and the Iao seem to be absent from the shorelines. It looks like it will be a late season, just like the last few years. Hopefully that means the Oama and Halalu will stay all the way through October. Wishing you all good luck, have fun, and please stay safe out there!
With no break in the trade winds, and gear to test, I grudgingly headed to the Westside. Not my favorite destination since it gets fished a lot and the traffic going home can be brutal in the afternoon. But with school out for the summer, the early morning drive was smooth sailing. I was meeting Lawrence on the water and he already had an 19lb ono in his fish bag before I had even left home!
He had gotten some akule before the sun came up, and the opelu didn’t bite for him so I knew I would have a hard time catching bait. My game plan was just to learn the shallow bottom fish grounds and hopefully catch some keeper sized good eating fish on the damashi and small jig.
I started with new red VMC offset Octopus hooks and 13 Fishing soft plastics infused with amino acids/protein, along with my standby CHL Minnows. I liked the way the Octopus hook hung straight down on the branch line because of the bend near the eye of the hook but was leery about the offset hook deep hooking the fish.
Found some fish marks near the bottom but nothing bit the baits for a long time. Began to wonder if the 13 Fishing plastic was scaring the fish!
Then I felt small fish hitting the lures and coming off, and eventually deep hooked a small nabeta that was hard to unhook. I was not loving the new hooks and the 13 Fishing soft plastic wasn’t getting bit any better than the CHL Minnows. The bite continued to be slow and I landed a kawalea (Heller’s barracuda) whose buddies broke off the other hooks so I changed to a 15lb damashi rig with the normal gold Maruto MZ hooks.
Lawrence was far away, out of radio range, so he called me on my cell to tell me he was hooked up to something BIG and was getting towed out to sea. 25 minutes into the fight, he was about to get spooled so he tightened his drag and the fish broke off. He ended up in 700ft of water and cranked up the Newport 300 motor on his Hobie Outback to get back in. He believes it was a legit ahi (yellowfin over 100lb) that he couldn’t stop on his Avet LX Raptor.
I stumbled upon a keeper nabeta and tried to get more to make a meal but failed. Then my damashi rig got mauled and I brought up an odd looking small kahala. I had a feeling it was an almaco jack, the fish they farm in Kona and call Kampachi, and thought about keeping it but let the 1lb fish go.
At home I looked up how to tell the difference between an almaco and greater amberjack. The almaco’s eyes are further back than the end of the jaw, whereas the greater amberjack’s eye are right above the end of its jaw. This was an almaco.
I figured I’d hook a bunch on the tungsten jig but as I swung the jig back to cast, it hit my paddle and the reel backlashed badly. Somehow I sliced my thumb in the process and by the time I got a band aid on to stop the bleeding I lost the school. 🙁
Lawrence met me and we headed in. The paddle back in was short and uneventful but dealing with the sloped sandy beach was brutal. The asphalt pavement was so hot I got burnt through my surf booties. You gotta be rugged to survive on this side of the island!
This was my 3rd time on the Westside and I still haven’t figured it out. There definitely are big fish if you have live bait, and shallow bottom fish if you get them when they are feeding, or have better bait than I did. I’ll give the VMC Octopus hooks and 13 Fishing lures another chance over hungrier fish before giving up on them. Traffic going home was much better than when I had done that during school season.
With only 1 nabeta I didn’t want to deal with deep frying the fish on a propane stove so I ended up scaling, gutting and removing the center bone so my sister could steam it for my dad. Her cats made quick work of the meat left on that bone. I wasn’t used to how flexible the Rapala Fish Pro fillet knife was so I had to learn to trust that it could actually cut through the bone. It was nice that the thin blade allowed me to cut so close to the bone and not waste meat. Finally, one of the new products worked as hoped!
Who doesn’t love receiving new fishing gear in the mail?
13 Fishing, the innovative young company that produces affordable, paradigm breaking products for the open minded fisherman, joined the Rapala family of companies last year. That meant I could get dealer pricing on their second generation Concept Z SLD bearing-less bait casting reel with an external sliding braking system. Since 2018, I had been fishing the original Concept Z reel inshore for small game and loved how easy it was to throw light lures, so I wanted to try the improved version with external brake adjustments and stronger gearing. Figured it would be a great reel for friends new to level wind bait casting to try out.
Rapala ships to Hawaii via UPS 2-day so shipping cost is really expensive. To spread the cost around I added a Rapala Fish Pro 6 inch Fillet Knife since I didn’t have a thin, flexible blade to cut sashimi. I had struggled to slice the weke nono from the last trip with my thicker, stiff blade since the the weke nono flesh is soft.
To round out the order I added VMC Octopus Live Bait hooks to try as red damashi hooks, and a set of 13 Fishing’s soft plastic ice fishing lures to mimic plankton. I exclusively use Completely Hooked Lures Minnows in the 1.5 inch size and they catch just about everything on the damashi, but wanted to see what the 13 Fishing critters infused with amino acids and proteins would attract.
Check back to hear how the new toys perform.
6/26/24: Here’s how the new gear performed the first time out.
I’ve been correlating Solar Lunar bite times with my catches and the action has seemed to be much better during those periods. Last week, the New Moon fell on a rare June light wind day and I planned to fish the 12:00pm to 2:30pm major bite time to see how good it could be.
The water was so calm at 9am that the bite was initially slow on the damashi rigged with Completely Hooked Lures Minnows but I landed a chunky toau (blacktail snapper) and some baby uku before getting the rig got busted up. I was surprised to bring up an opelu in the blind and moved up from the 12lb damashi rig to 15lb, and trolled the live opelu with a 2oz weight out to 220ft.
Something took the opelu and pulled line for about 20 seconds before releasing the bait. What came back was from a horror movie; a headless opelu stripped of its skin, hooked on the rear hook.
What could suck the head and skin off and not get hooked? Since the remains looked like a skinned opelu fillet, I dropped it back down and something slurped it up and eventually rocked me.
The frozen akule I put down was ignored, so I dropped the 15lb damashi rig on a good mark in 200ft. It got picked up and busted off so I upgraded to the heaviest rig I had, a 25lb rig. At that point the major bite period was starting so I dropped that 3 hook rig down with high hopes and something heavy and strong for the light jig rod pulled some drag and bent the rod. What came up was a 3.5lb white papio and 2 fat taape (blueline snapper). The bite slowed in the deep and I wanted to see how good the shallow bite at 100ft was, so I made my way back in.
The 25lb damashi rig wasn’t scaring off the fish, and an uku and weke nono aka weke ula came up together on one drop. But even that damashi rig got busted off.
Here’s some highlights of the damashi action.
Since bigger fish were hitting, I tied a 60g green/gold jig to what normally is a damashi setup and dropped it to the bottom. A couple lifts and bam, a spirited weke nono was on. As long as I was dropping on an “active mark” (a sonar mark indicating moving predator fish), the jig got bit. The fish were still biting at 3pm and it was hard to leave the best jig bite I’ve experienced but I still had 2.5 miles to travel so I cranked up my Bixpy motor and headed in.
Here’s some highlights of the jig action. Major bite time on a New Moon is legit!
About fifty 40g and 60g compact tungsten jigs were sold or given out in the last 2 years to the early adopters. My kayak friends said that the jigs were catching all sorts of fish, but I hadn’t heard back from the boaters and shore jiggers.
Recently, a shore jigging friend placed another order of both the 40g and 60g jigs so I asked him how they had been working. He was initially secretive but said the small, heavy jigs have worked very well when the papio/ulua and other inshore predators were chasing small baitfish.
He fished this past weekend, using the BKK Sea Ranger Plus assist hooks as shown above, and caught and released 2 papio on Saturday but a shark took the next one along with the 40g jig. He switched to a 60g jig and caught and released another papio before the bite slowed.
He fished again on Sunday and caught a few moano but no papio. He reported that his hookup ratio with the BKK assists was excellent.
He offered a bit more hard earned wisdom: the small jigs cut through the wind well and out cast bait and every other lure he could use. There have been times when the small jig have outfished live oama, since the small size looks like nehu/iao and the assist hooks don’t easily snag the reef.
He shore whips with a 10ft JDM rod, Shimano Twin Power 4K, and 15lb braid. He’s landed ulua this way and is trying for his next one. I’d credit him for the amazing photos but he’s trying to do his thing on the down low. 🙂
So I think it’s safe to assume that the other jiggers are quietly catching fish with the heavy micro jigs and they don’t want the word to get out.
You can find the jigs and assist hooks in the Store by clicking this link. Sorry, we only ship to US addresses. Mahalo!
Yesterday, I was hoping to fish the Windward side of Oahu today and wanted to know how brown the water was gonna be after recent rains. It was completely dry on the south side of Oahu and Weather Underground wasn’t predicting much rain for the Windward side but a friend gave me the first hand report that Kamehameha Hwy at Waikane was flooded and cars were being turned around. He had to go the Mililani – Haleiwa – Kahuku way to get to Laie.
He sent me this link to the National Weather Service radar map of Hawaii (pan and zoom to your area of interest) and I could see that side of the island was getting pounded.
To confirm how much rain actually fell, I went to National Weather Service Rainfall Summary page and checked the 3hr totals for the areas nearby. With these tools I could not only see how much rain was falling that instant but how much rain had fallen recently.
These sites will be helpful as we brace for the next round of out of season torrential rains.
If you’ve gone to your local tackle shop with a certain rod in mind, chances are you didn’t find it in stock. Maybe you had to settle for what they had, or had them order a rod for you, and then the rod broke during normal use. So you took the broken rod back to the shop you bought it from, only to be told that you have to contact the manufacturer to have it replaced under warranty. Then you find out you have to pay shipping to send the broken rod to the mainland, which could cost more than $25.
There’s so many issues to unpack here.
I get it, our local shops don’t have a lot of space to display rods, and shipping the rods here from the mainland costs a lot of money. They have to bring in the types of rods that would sell the easiest, which often means lower priced rods.
What if you wanna try a premium rod but don’t see it in the stores? Have you been able to order the rod online and was the final price reasonable?
A few friends have snapped rods at a rate that seemed higher than years’ past. Maybe quality control has gone down in certain brands? Kayak anglers put a lot of stress on their gear, but a friend broke 2 St Croix Rift jig rods in two successive trips and didn’t appear to do anything out of the norm.
Holoholo guest poster Matthew broke a Major Craft N-One whipping rod on a tilapia!
And another friend broke a Major Craft Crostage whipping rod after buying it in a local shop and testing the spline at home!
These rod issues are a pet peeve of mine. I’ve been on a mission to vet rod brands and bring in quality rods to sell to the local crew. I started with St Croix (the St Croix Rift rods that snapped were not purchased from me!), but the company became so unresponsive that I could never fill an order. So I moved onto Phenix Rods and really liked the two kayak live bait rods I have been testing, but Phenix was bought out by a larger company and they moved operations from Southern California to TX. Shipping to Hawaii nearly doubled and they were initially bogged down in the transition but have been responsive to requests again.
So I tried United Composites, the well respected, Made In The USA, rod blank company out of Huntington Beach, CA and they miraculously accepted me as a dealer. They are well known for making very strong, sensitive, light rods for specific needs, and would be a good source if you plug for big fish, shore cast for ulua, troll for pelagics or live bait fish. There’s a 7ft boat rod that looks like it would work well as a kayak or jet ski live bait rod that I will be trying soon!
My rep at Phenix Rods moved from Phenix to Ocean’s Legacy, which is an Australian brand and makes durable rods for the Aussie land based and boat based plugger and jigger. Their rods aren’t as thin and light as the Japanese rods, but they are less expensive and handle stress better. Ocean’s Legacy ships their products out of Texas for the US market and there’s a few reasonably priced jigging rods I’m hoping to test soon.
No wonder the local shops can’t bring in a variety of brands. So few of the quality rod makers are filling orders. I sure hope I can secure a dependable source of very good rods at reasonable prices that fit our unique needs in Hawaii.
There has been a lot of speculation as to why a tiger shark would ram a kayak so hard, with no cautious sniffing around at all. Some believed fish blood or bait had attracted the shark. Others believed the shark was attracted to my foot in the water, or the floating paddle.
Hopefully this follow up video answers most questions surrounding the incident that happened about 11 months ago.
Update: 4/24/24: Phenix Rods was purchased by a larger company and the factory has been moved from California to Texas so the shipping cost to Hawaii has increased. We’re currently working with Phenix to bring more rods in. Stay tuned.
We’ve been a Phenix Rod online dealer for half a year now and I’ve been trying to verify that the rods are as good as I’ve been hearing from the bass, trout and salt water guys. Been using a 7ft Heavy and a 7ft Extra Heavy live bait rod on the kayak and they performed well so far, but haven’t gotten really big fish to stress test them. I do like the lightness, sensitivity, components and durability of both rods.
Here’s a short video of the first day using the Black Diamond Heavy rod.
Phenix sells finished freshwater, saltwater, and travel rods in spinning and casting models, as well as the blanks of each. They are known to be very light in weight, yet strong in backbone, and are less expensive than the comparable high end brands.
Phenix offers a lifetime warranty on the rods that is basically this: If you break the rod, you send the pieces back to Phenix in California, and pay a bit more than 50% of the cost of the rod to have a replacement shipped back to you. That’s better than a lot of rod manufacturers these days.
These are just a few of the products the Hawaii angler may be interested in:
Black Diamond Surf – 2 piece Spinning rods 9ft to 14ft
View details on Phenix website.
Redeye Travel Saltwater Spinning rods – 3 piece, 7ft 6in, rated 15lb – 40lb and 30lb – 80lb.
View details on Phenix website.
Megalodan Jigging rods
Spinning: 5ft 6in PE 4-8 to 6ft PE 6-10
View details on Phenix website.
Casting: 5ft 6in PE 2-4 to 6ft PE 6-10.
View details on Phenix website.
Shipping of the rods from TX to HI is pretty expensive so I plan to order a batch of rods at a time. If you’re interested in trying any of the premium rods you see on their website, I’ll drop the price to make it worth your while. Please get in touch through the contact page.
Mahalo!
HECO’s less than reliable service has gotten worse since the Maui Wildfires. We were somewhat prepared with a bunch of standard lanterns (alkaline batteries removed), and some compact LED rechargeable lanterns, and headlamps that were fully charged. When the power went out at night, I found it a little humbug to load the alkaline batteries into the lanterns, and the one that we had been using occasionally had corroded because the Duracell batteries leaked. Even with fresh D size alkaline batteries, the lanterns put out glary light with dead spots.
The led compact lanterns, in comparison, had been holding a full charge, lit the area in an even, non-glary way, and just needed to be topped off after the power came on.
To navigate in the dark, I wore a compact led rechargeable headlamp that also doubled as a flashlight, throwing a wide, consistent beam of light.
Rechargeable lanterns and headlamps cost more than alkaline powered versions, but put out a more useable light in a smaller profile and have excellent warranties. Their batteries last for days on low power. In the long run, they will cost less than the alkaline versions and are better for the environment.
For those muggy times when the power goes out and our electric powered fans and air conditioners won’t work, we have a couple Dewalt rechargeable fans that run on the Dewalt power tool battery, lasting for hours at low speed.
It gives me peace of mind to know we can get through the next power outage safely and comfortably.
Note: We don’t sell lanterns, headlamps or fans and are not compensated in any way for mentioning these products.
4 years ago I was given a few Ledlenser lanterns and headlamps to test, and since then, have bought more from their website to give as gifts when ledlenserusa.com run their 50% off sales. The Fenix brand of led rechargeable lights is more readily available in Hawaii. Both brands make excellent lights.
Recently fished the same area 3 times in different weather and solar-lunar conditions as I had mentioned in this post. The fish bit really well in the afternoon on the first 2 trips because of weather and solar-lunar effects, and only the “rubbish fish” bit on the 3rd outing because the water was too calm and clear.
Here’s a short video of the damashi/sabiki fishing to support this.
0:04 1st time – 2pm, slightly overcast with Major Bite period. The target fish (uku, moana kali, yellowspot papio) I had been looking for bit, but they were small.
1:11 2nd time, 2pm, dark skies with heavy rain, no bite period. Every drop of the damashi during the rain storm got bit, even by akule (goggle eye) that normally don’t bite during the day.
1:49 3rd time – 11am, very calm and clear, no bite period. Too calm, only the “rubbish fish” bit.
For boat, kayak and even from shore, calm days with little swell are much more comfortable to fish. But those days are often extremely slow.
As an unplanned experiment, I kayak fished the same area 3 times. The first was overcast and a little choppy; second time had cross swell and a rain storm chased me off the water. The third time was glass calm with no swell all day.
On the first outing I stumbled upon biting fish in the early afternoon that happened to coincide with the solar – lunar bite time. The bite was surprisingly good and a 25lb ulua landed on the light jig rod ended the day.
The second outing was a little slower because it wasn’t during a good solar – lunar period but when the rain storm rolled in the fishing got really good. Akule, opelu and lai were hunkered down in relatively shallow water and biting on every drop of the damashi. Unhooking the lai slowed me down and I left when it got too cold to fish. Akule normally don’t bite during the day and must’ve thought it was night time!
The third time was so pleasant to fish. Easy to paddle, no current to push me off the spots but only the less desirable fish like taape, moana and hawk fish bit well.
I slow trolled a bite size opelu out to 200ft and back to the shallows with no interest from predators. Bait stealers eventually ripped it apart at 100ft and a big kawalea took a frozen opelu later.
The water surface looks like a mirror in this photo!
I had to work really hard to catch some nabeta to salvage the trip, chumming around and baiting my damashi rig with opelu skin.
So why do fish bite better on the darker days with more chop on the water? It seems like prey fish such as opelu and akule feel safer when they’re harder to be spotted by larger fish, and the predatory fish feel they can ambush prey fish better when it’s not as easy to see them approach. So on the calm, bright days, you’ll see the smaller fish on the food chain moving around carefree, while the larger fish are taking naps some where.
What should you do to help generate a bite? Chum around to start a feeding frenzy and use the freshest bait possible.
I’ve been looking for uku and great tasting goat fish (moana kali and weke nono) on the Windward side for years now and kept coming up empty. Ended up changing my jigging setup and the area I searched, and the results were astounding. There’s a video of the action at the end of this post.
There seems to be uku (green jobfish) all over the South and West sides of Oahu. I’ve dedicated hours dragging live and dead opelu all over the Windward side dropoffs and no uku have bitten. Apparently the grounds I was fishing were sloping sandy areas, not rocky rubble the uku preferred.
The patchy reef areas did hold a lot of bait and reef fish, and I’ve hooked a few ulua and kahala jigging before, so the few times I took a break from bait fishing to test the compact tungsten jig, I did so on a rod designed for heavier jigs. Hadn’t been getting much action with that approach. I decided to give the 40g and 60g tungsten jigs the best possible presentation, so I switched to a light action Shimano Trevala rod paired with a Shimano Curado 300EJ bait casting reel with 25lb fluorocarbon leader. To hedge my bets, I used BKK assist hooks with glow in the dark fibers.
I started the morning catching a couple medium sized opelu, put them down on a weighted rig and slow trolled them over the 90ft ledge for 4 hrs. No uku showed up, only bait stealers. Out of frustration, and running out of fishing time, I headed to a slightly deeper but flatter reef structure I hadn’t fished before.
A cluster of reef fish showed on the fish finder, so I dropped the damashi down and a hard pulling fish responded. It felt like a papio and I was stoked to see a yellow spot papio come up. Since they feed on bottom dwelling crustaceans, they have a much cleaner, sweeter taste than their lookalike cousin, the omilu (bluefin trevally).
The next drop hooked a fish that pulled drag also, and I was looking to load up on yellow spot papio but it was a small moana kali. If it were a pound larger I would have been tempted to keep it.
Then the elusive uku bit the damashi but it was much too small also. The moana kali and uku did give me hope that larger versions would be nearby.
On the next drop a small omilu and a taape (blueline snapper) came up, then the action slowed so I moved shallower to a 90ft spot on my maps Capt Erik had given me years ago.
Taape first came up on the damashi and then hard pulls resulted in hooks broken off. I went up from the 12lb damashi rig to a 15lb rig and felt a small fish get hooked that was eaten by a larger fish. That rig had its hooks bitten off too so it was finally a great time to drop the 40g tungsten jig. Unfortunately the drift was too fast for that jig to fall quickly to the bottom.
I switched to a blue/silver 60g tungsten jig and hooked a kawalea on the first drop. That was probably what was cutting off my damashi hooks. I didn’t want it stinking up my fish bag so it was released. The next two drops of the jig yielded large, brown hagi. I’ve never experienced such a hot damashi and jig bite like this.
The next jig fish was a thick moano (manybar goatfish) proving the 2.5 inch jig mimicked small bait. It’s known to have tasty, soft flesh but small bones but I kept it hoping the bones would be big enough to avoid.
The bite slowed at this shallower spot and it was almost 2pm so I made a pass back to the deeper spot, on the way in. Hoping to hook a bigger yellow spot papio or uku with the jig, I dropped it down and the line went limp. I reeled up and the jig was cut off with no tug at all! What the heck was happening in the middle of this calm day?!
I had one more jig, a green/gold 60g tungsten jig that had produced before, and put it on. Dropped that down, slow pitched it a couple of times and the line surged angrily. Right away I knew it was a pretty big ulua (GT) and didn’t know if the light jig rod with only 25lb leader would hold. I tried to pump the fish up when it wasn’t running, and was surprised how much backbone the parabolic jig rod had. Offshore kayak guys like heavy action jig rods to fish for pelagics and I always thought they’d have too soft a tip, but I now understand how the soft tip is forgiving for the seated kayak angler.
I was just praying I’d be able to get a photo of the fish with the jig in its mouth and after a tense 20 minute battle, using the Bixpy motor to chase it down, it was on the surface. I tried to slide it onto the kayak to unhook it but the leader broke at the jig and the fish flopped in the water. It had barotrauma and couldn’t swim down, but was swimming in circles and was hard to tail grab it. Finally I was able to loop its tail with my gaff and pull it on board. I removed the jig and pushed it deep in the water. The fish finder showed it making its way slowly back down. Crazy such a large fish ate a 2.5 inch jig.
So why was the damashi and jig bite so good? Here’s my theory:
Everything came perfectly together that day. I’ll be back soon to see if it was a one-off.
This is what I brought home. The moana did turn out to still have small bones and the yellowspot papio made really good non-fishy, slightly firm sashimi with an oily feel.
The tungsten jigs and BKK assist hooks can be found in the Sinking section of the Store.
Here’s some of the jigging action.
Guys here popping and plugging and even jigging refer to their braided line as PE. West Coasters call their braid Spectra. You even hear the word Dyneema occasionally. Do they mean the same thing? What is the best line for your application?
Here’s a quick read to get that all sorted out.
Technically all braid is made from PE (polyethylene). Both Spectra and Dyneema are made from PE and Spectra filaments are usually thicker and more robust, while Dyneema filaments are thinner. Line companies use different number of strands (4, 8, 12 or 16) and line coatings which affect the roundness and castability of the braided lines.
Spectra is what the West Coasters call their braid because the first braid they used (Izorline, Tufline, PowerPro) was made from the trademarked name Spectra.
Dyneema is used by the high end Japanese companies to make thin, higher strand line. Dyneema is generally cheaper than Spectra per strand so lower end line companies using Dyneema put out inferior braid.
PE Scale pertains to the thickness of braided lines not breaking strength. When we Westerners were first exposed to this new form of rating braided line, we did a simple conversion from PE thickness to max breaking strength. For example PE5 = 50lb max breaking strength. Well it turns out that is inaccurate. Some brands of a certain thickness of braid will test lower than other brands of the same thickness.
So keeping this short and simple, what’s the best braid to use for your application?
Braided line thickness and breaking strength are what you should be concerned about. If you just want an all around braid for your reel, focus on matching the breaking strength of the line to your rod/reel. If you want to maximize castability, get a thinner diameter line, but if you need abrasion resistance, you have to factor that in also. Thicker braid is more abrasion resistant than thinner braid.
The higher end braided lines from Japan try to marry thin diameter with high breaking strength and decent abrasion resistance.
What braided line do you use?
Holoholo writer Hunter Young has evolved from a shore fisherman to a diver and now a boat fisherman and is still in high school. He’s recently been focused on getting better as a Deep 7 fisherman.
Hunter:
If someone told me 4 years ago that in 4 years I’d be primarily targeting deep bottom fish on my boat, I would probably have asked them “what’s a deep bottom fish?”.
When I first started fishing many, many years ago, I stayed simple, targeting reef fish. During summers I would catch oama and halalu and use them as live bait for papio. During winters I’d baitcast tako legs for oio. Main point being I was a very casual shoreline fisherman, and it remained that way for a while. Throughout the years, I gained knowledge from experience and old timers at the spots.
During the summer of 2020, my dad brought home a small 15ft Mikuni boat. It had an old and beat down outboard which would die out every 5 minutes.
Though I now look back and realize just how sketchy that boat was, at the time I thought that I had just unlocked an entirely new world of fishing. We owned that boat for a little over a year but during that time, I discovered the deep bottom fishery. My first time hearing about the Deep 7 was when I saw one of my friends post a picture on Instagram with a lineup of weird looking yellow striped fish (gindai). I was intrigued by the colors on this fish so I did some research and found out about the Deep 7. I kept researching and the deeper I went the more and more amazed I became. To me, it was absurd that fish could even thrive in waters that deep. From that day on, I made it a mission to learn how to catch these fish.
We were lucky enough to be gifted two Daiwa Tanacom electric reels from a friend of my dad. These electric reels allowed us to explore the deep dark waters 600 ft deep. On our first trip I vividly remember catching a big gindai on my first drop. I was so happy that I kept looking in the cooler and staring at the colors on the fish. I was so happy in fact that I forced my grandma to cook it up that same night I caught it!
Fast forward 3 years and we arrive at the middle of the summer of 2023. During the 3 years that have passed, I learned tons of techniques and information on bottom fishing. Still, I was only catching small fish, like ehu (squirrelfish snapper), kalekale (Von Siebold’s snapper), gindai (Brigham’s snapper). I hadn’t caught anything big yet. This was also around the time that I made my first trip to the infamous Penguin Banks. Funny story, on that first trip to Penguin Banks, I didn’t catch a single bottom fish! Just a bunch of aku.
On my second trip I decided to try a pinnacle that came up to 800 ft from around 3000 ft. I ended that day with a good lineup full of big ehu and hogo (scorpionfish) . My trips remained this way for a while. Catching ehus and hogos, but never really hooking any big fish.
Until one day I decided to try a different rig and change up my bait. It seemed like the trip would be another lineup and ehus and hogos but on my 5th drop my line went slack on the bottom. “What?” I thought to myself, there was no way I could be on bottom because I had brought my rig up 40ft. I pushed the jog lever on my electric reel up to bring in some line. When the slack disappeared and the tension came back my pole tip started going crazy! Then the line from my reel started peeling out. I quickly tightened the drag and stepped back. I waited anxiously on the boat hoping the fish would not come off. When the number on the reel screen read 30ft I still could not see a fish in the water.
As I reeled up the last few feet of line I grabbed my rig and started handlining it up. I was confused because it seemed I had lost my lead and my rig was floating up. Then all of a sudden this big mass of the most beautiful hue of red I have seen in my life appeared out of nowhere. Onaga (longtail snapper)! I quickly reached down and grabbed the gills of the fish pulling it up into the boat. “NO WAY!” I screamed over and over. The onaga ended up weighing just over 12lbs. That was my first experience with the true intensity of deep bottom fishing.
Every trip after that provided me with onaga ranging from 3lbs to my biggest ever 16lbs.
It seems like the closer we get to the winter months. The more onaga are caught and the bigger they are. Around the end of November I had an especially crazy day where the onaga seemed to bite on every drop. I even got a triple onaga on one of my drops!
During one of my trips at Penguin Banks It seemed like the onaga bite had slowed down early, so I decided to take some dead opelu onto the banks in 150-200 ft of water. I hooked up an entire opelu and dropped it down onto some big marks on my gps. As soon as I closed the bail on my reel, I was hooked up! And it was big. As I brought the fish up I saw the silver flash of a big uku. That was my first uku weighing over 10lbs. After that day I devoted some time to learning how to master this, and although I have only dedicated one day to strictly ukus, I managed to get some good sized ones. My biggest one weighing in at 18 lbs.
I’ve learned quite a few things over the past few years but I have 3 tips which I think are the most helpful for people starting to get into bottom fishing. These tips might not work for everyone but in my experience they work for me.
Oh also if you’re getting sharked, move spots! The sharks will keep taking your fish without mercy.
In the Winter, the huge NW swells often make the Windward side unfishable by kayak. So the week before New Year’s I returned to the crowded south shore amongst the boaters and kayakers who were hoping to catch something for their New Year’s feast.
I was trying to get a nice uku (green jobfish) that could be sashimi’d and poke’d but landed a perfect sized nabeta on the damashi early on. Usually I end up with just one, which serves one person at most, so I put in the effort to catch a few more. I was surprised to catch 2 more, and then had a drag pulling nunu (trumpetfish) join the party. Then this whopper of a nabeta hit, tried to go back into the sand, and eventually came up. It was the largest I had ever seen and I contemplated releasing it because I heard the big ones get rubbery when deep fried, but decided to steam it instead. Check out how big that nabeta was.
Then another nunu bit the damashi and the slimey buggah was released like the first one. I finally caught a moana for uku bait, put it down and it was immediately hit. Unfortunately a huge brown hagi (triggerfish) came up after a heavy tussle. The next moana had its bottom half cut off despite the fact I had a second hook in its tail. The last moana had a bite around its gills but the attacker missed the hooks again. Whatever the predators were, they were too small so I went back to adding to the nabeta catch.
Two more nabeta rounded out the catch, the most I ever caught on the South Shore. I scaled the two largest nabeta (12.5 inches and 11 inches) which was much harder than I thought. The nabeta scales are so pliable to allow them to burrow in the sand, that the scales bend when you try to remove them. If I intended to pour boiling oil on the steamed nabeta, the scales would have become crunchy and eat-able but my family didn’t want the oily finish.
I just gut and gilled the smaller nabeta and left the scales since everything would be deep fried crispy. All 4 were developing eggs or sperm to spawn yet the two largest ones had no eggs or sperm. And the smaller ones had critters in their stomachs yet the 2 largest ones had nothing. Maybe the two largest ones just spawned and were trying to restore their reserves? One of the smaller ones had a whole bobtail squid in its stomach (thanks Kelly for the species identification). Check out how hard it is to scale nabeta and also how easy it is to gut and gill them.
I gave the 4 smaller nabeta to a friend with instructions to salt & pepper, coat in corn starch, deep fry ’til golden brown, take out to cool and then deep fry again to really crisp the scales and skin. Unfortunately they only had Olive Oil and we learned that that type of oil doesn’t get hot enough to do the job.
The largest nabeta did get a little firm and rubbery after being steamed with ginger slices in tin foil but still tasted very good with just some Ponzu drizzle. My dad loved it so we steamed the other large nabeta that same way and that came out soft and creamy. I guess when nabeta reach a certain point their flesh gets rubbery. Nabeta is the least fishy tasting fish we’ve steamed and has such a nice slightly flaky texture. Can’t go wrong with them deep fried or steamed.
2023 was better overall than 2022 but fell a bit short of expectations. A weak El Nino did warm up the water in the late Spring but faded, and it was a windier than normal year. Overall water temps didn’t get that high and there were less fishable offshore days than the previous years. Thanks to the Holoholo writers for summarizing their season.
Shoreline:
Oama:
Some spots were very good and consistent, holding oama through September. Other spots that normally hold large schools were dry. The oama came in late July and left by October, which is the typical timeframe. Overall, an 8 out of 10. Papio weren’t hitting the piles much though.
Halalu:
It was a very good halalu season on Oahu. The regular spots held fish for a long time despite getting pounded. Papio were seen and some caught near the halalu piles.
Oio Flats Jigging:
Matthew:
The O’io fishing this year has been great in general. Unlike previous years, I chose to completely forego the summer Papio run and instead focus on only flats fishing for O’io. It got a little tough this year with the presence of many new anglers on the flats, but spot rotation is something that I’ve found extremely valuable. Rotating between four or five spots has kept each one fresh for the next time I fish it. I never fish the same spot twice in a row. With the increase in pressure, I’ve hardly seen any fish in the shallows, instead being forced to go to deeper water in search of those smart fish.
This summer showed a really impressive number of O’io, but most of them were smaller fish (under 4 pounds). This winter has been very cold and while the numbers of O’io have decreased exponentially, the quality of fish has also increased exponentially. Recently I’ve been fishing for most of the trip without a nibble but depending on that one 5lb+ fish to come around. I haven’t had much numbers, but nearly all of my fish in the past month have been over 5 pounds. For example, I went through the entirety of August, September, and October without catching a single Oio over 5 pounds, although I was catching more numbers in smaller fish. I’ve also shifted my strategy from “stay in one area you’re really confident in” to “cover as much ground as you possibly can” recently. They’re still out there, you just gotta hope for the best sometimes. Good luck🤙
Fly Fishing:
Jason: The year overall was a fairly productive one, with all of our usual flats producing bonefish, along with the occasional 10-12” omilu (a trophy on our flats). By October, the action started to taper off, but this is perfectly normal for those of us hunting roundjaw o’io on the flats (versus the deeper water sharp jaw variety). Looking back at my catch logs for myself and friends (aka our group text string) I’d say our numbers were pretty much right around our averages, however we did focus a bit more on the windward side of the island this year than years past. This is partly due to the Navy’s closure of a popular flat, which remains closed as of this writing, and partly because exploring new waters is part of the fun in fishing!
Plugging/Whipping:
Thad: I dedicated more time during the summer of 2023 to throwing plugs instead of bubble/fly, so my papio catches were down. Did that mean I caught more of the bigger predators like the elusive ulua than in the past? Nope. But my fishing partner Dino had a year to remember with his back-to-back big ulua on consecutive days. I did have in increase in big strikes so the opportunities were there but I suffered from the rubbah hook/bent hook curse so I caught less fish overall. The plugging action picks up around the summer months but the timing is a little different every year. The 2023 action seemed to start a little earlier than the year before. Whipping the flats for oio was more productive for me this year as we’ve been able to dial in some new spots. People say the winter months are better for oio but to me they seem to bite equally year-round. Hopefully the oio action will continue through 2024 and I’ll be able to make the summer plugging strikes stick.
Dino:
2023 has been a really weird year as far as fishing goes. It was really up and down for me. I accomplished what I feel I will never be able to accomplish again. I hit uluas on back to back days in July. A white ulua in the 35 ish pound range and an omilu in the 22 pound range. Lost another one at landing some time after. The oio action on the flats has been hit or miss. Some days it’s good. Some days it’s dead as can be.
The Summer was good and the plugging really slowed in the Winter so I’ve been doing flats fishing for oio which has been a little bit of hit and miss for me. Picking one up here and there.
Hoping that 2024 can bring some good action for the bigger shoreline game. Gathering and prepping the plugging gear as we speak.
Nearshore:
Kayak Fishers (West and Northsides of Oahu): Largest shibi (yellowfin tuna under 100lb) of the season were caught in the Spring, along with mahi. Summer to early Fall were consistent for shibi and mahi. Aku popped up in the early Fall. Ono were caught in early late Fall. Bite has slowed in Winter but there are still pelagics to be caught if you’re in the right place with a lively opelu. Uku seems to be available year round.
Scott: (Windward side kayak) Slow ’til March when aku schools moved in shallow. Then the wind blew ’til October. When the weather finally allowed offshore kayaking, the small shibi and small mahi were in shallow but that only lasted a few weeks, water temp was 79 degrees. In December the temp dropped to 74 degrees and the pelagics were scarce. Currently, nehu bait balls are getting pounded by small kawakawa and opelu from below, and birds from above. North swell often shutting down exposed spots.
Dive:
Pono: Didn’t get a ton of diving in this year due to having a busier than normal schedule and a windier than normal summer (my usual dive season). However, the few outings that I were able to go on were very productive! I had a lot of fun down-sizing my speargun, kayak diving, and trying new recipes. Diving deeper has shown me that Oahu still get fish if you know where to look! I think there were more nearshore pelagics in the Fall compared to other times of the year, we were seeing shibi and kawakawa on reef dives.
Boat:
Erik: 2023 brought two new boats into our fishing experiences, a 21’ Force and a 17’ Boston Whaler. The year started steady and progressively got better with October being our best month. We are blessed to have landed Ahis in both boats this year and have caught enough fish to share with friends and family.
Offshore fishing is still good but the wind and high surf have been limiting factors.
We look forward to more fishing adventures in 2024 and hope to see more of our fishing family out in the ocean.
I just got over a month long bout of bronchitis and needed an easy day of fishing. The water was glassy calm, the normally picky daytime opelu were ravenous but the large predators weren’t around to eat the snack sized 7 inchers.
It was so calm I paddled a mile south and ran into 12 inch sized opelu but all my 12lb to 15lb rigs got busted off by either multiple opelu, or kawalea (Heller’s barracuda). Twice I landed a big opelu but had the rest of the rig broken off. Since I recently became aware that a lot of friends like to eat opelu, I tried to catch as many as I could before I ran out of rigs. The fish were caught mainly on Halloween (gold with black glitter) and green CHL Minnows.
Here’s the video of the relaxing day.