Wait! The oama – papio season isn’t over yet

October 2, 2014 By Scott 5 Comments

will this be the last of the season? (11″ pliers)

I was fearing the worst after the last two failed attempts to catch a keeper papio on a trolled oama. Thinking the season was over, I took a couple mid-sized oama, and 4 emaciated ones that failed to gain weight in captivity. Figured I may as well set them free if nothing was biting. As the ultimate test I trolled my most productive spot.

The bite definitely wasn’t red hot, but I did land a hard fighting 14 inch omilu in front of the surf zone and had another strong strike come off. I was down to the emaciated oama whose bodies were narrower than their heads. 2 trumpet fish and two small papio liked the looks of those appetizers and got hooked.

papio sushi

My friend Dean, a former sushi chef, turned the papio into this beautiful sushi platter. The brown maki sushi in the middle row are a papio poke mixture, and the light colored maki sushi were made from the papio filet. It’s amazing what some people can do with a fresh caught fish.

Guess the season isn’t over yet. I plan to take the remaining jumbo oama out for a swim at another spot I’ve been letting rest. Click here to see how I did.

Papio bite slowing down? Say it isn’t so!

September 26, 2014 By Scott Leave a Comment

To determine if yesterday’s slow fishing was due to the incoming storm or, ugh, the end of the summer papio season, I went back to the same spot. The winds were about 15 mph instead of 20+ mph, so it was much more manageable to troll The water level was lower than I prefer for this spot but that was the highest it would be all day. Sad to say, I just got a few aha strikes (saw one jump in the air to spit the hook); had some weird bites where the oama appeared to be stuck on a rock but when retrieved it had bite marks; and hooked another 4 inch omilu. No papio or kaku strikes.

Does this mean the epic summer bite on live oama is over? Say it isn’t so! Earlier in the season divers told me that there were schools of oama just outside the break not being harassed by predators. Maybe the oama school has moved out to deeper water, and the papio have no reason to be be cruising the inner reef anymore.

I’ll check another spot before putting a fork in this summer’s oama trolling season.

Wind + rain = no fish

September 25, 2014 By Scott 1 Comment

Some of the trophy oama I caught just two days ago started to die from some form of ich. To salvage what I had, I took a mix of 3 large and 3 small oama out for a troll. My favorite spot that has always seemed to be in a wind break was funneling the NNE winds through the valley today and diagonally out to sea. Paddling through the chop and slop was really tough, and to add to my misery it started to rain hard for a while. The only thing missing from the perfect storm were waves to capsize me. It actually got kind of scary when I realized I was paddling toward shore for a really long time and not making much progress. A stand up paddler was lying down and trying to make it back to land in as least a wind resistant manner also.

Usually these kind of conditions just make it hard to rig up and paddle but don’t normally affect the bite. Today something put the fish off their feed. After paddling for almost 2 hours I just had one strike that came off. First I thought the jumbo sized oama was scaring the predators but even a peanut oama went untouched. The only winners today were the 3 oama I set free.

I’m really hoping the papio season didn’t suddenly end and instead, the cause of the poor fishing was the drop in barometric pressure due to the storm. I need to blame something for this goose egg.

Trophy oama hunting

September 23, 2014 By Scott 2 Comments

trophy oama gear

After losing so many jumbo oama yesterday, I decided to scale up my gear to land the trophy oama. I felt a little silly but I took my smallest bait casting rig with a Calcutta 50 reel and spliced on a 4lb fluorocarbon leader. My plan was to fish it like it was a straight pole, and if I hooked a strong oama, the fish could pull drag instead of ripping free. I fished a lower tide than yesterday’s and the few oama around were scattered and feeding. I landed a few medium sized oama on the straight pole, and then had 3 jumbos tear off. Time to get the trophy oama rig!

trophy sized oama

The oama seemed to know I was loaded for bear and hid for a while. I finally found them just outside of the shaded area and hooked a few that peeled drag! Landed a few 6 inch plus trophies and called it a day. It was much harder to deal with a rod and reel than a straight pole but it was pretty fun to land the bigger fish on the ultralight gear.

Next up would be to land a big papio on one of the trophy baits.

Late season jumbo oama

September 23, 2014 By Scott 1 Comment

late season oama school

I went to my early season South Shore oama spot and sure enough the oama had left town. Panicked, I hurried to the spot where I’ve been finding them lately, and there was still a large school in the protected shallows. I was relieved to still find them there but frustrated that they wouldn’t even follow my bait.

I went off looking for some hungrier strays and found some jumbo (5 – 6 inch) oama that would be heading out past the reef soon. They bit but they were so strong they would rip themselves off the hook before I could land them. It was a lot like sight fishing for oio. I would hunt down these larger oamas cruising the bottom for food, hook them, and try to let the pole take the impact of their panicked runs. 90% broke off before I could slide the net under them.

jumbo oama

After all that work I ended up with only 10, but hopefully the size of these bruisers will deter the smaller papio from whacking them when I troll ’em.

Hawaii Fish and Dive Expo 2014

September 22, 2014 By Scott Leave a Comment

Fish & Dive Expo 2014

I checked out the Hawaii Fish and Dive Expo this past weekend, and unlike the Ocean Expo held in April, there were many more products at show prices for sale. I saw dive masks, fins, guns, knives, just about everything you needed to get started free diving. On the fishing side, there were rods, spinning and conventional reels, ulua plugs, stainless steel rod holders, etc. I didn’t need any of that but I did pick up a spool of Seaguar Blue Label fluorocarbon leader at a great price.

Kurt of the Barbless Circle Hook Project

I spent some time talking with Kurt Kawamoto of NOAA’s Barbless Circle Hook Project. Kurt teams up with DLNR’s Earl Miyamoto and goes out to shorecasting tournaments, schools and fishing expos to educate the fishing community on the use of barbless circle hooks. These hooks have been proven to be easily removed by human and even self removed by accidentally hooked Hawaiian monk seals and green sea turtles. The barbless circle hooks have been adopted by some of the most respected and prodigious shore casters and are believed to not diminish catch ratios. Their goal is to provide a way for fishermen to co-exist with the protected monk seals and green sea turtles in the least impactful way. Here’s the link to the Barbless Circle Hook Facebook page.

Kurt, a marine biologist, explained why we’re seeing so many juvenile reef fish this year. Here’s the simplified version (or at least how I understood in): Reef fish spawn on the reef and the fertilized eggs are pulled out into the deep by ocean currents. These reef fish actually develop as fry far away from the protection of the reef, and have to rely on ocean currents to help them get back home. Something, probably warmer than normal water, triggered a massive spawn of most of the reef fish this spring, and pelagic fish like bottom fish, tuna, mahis, etc are being caught with baby reef fish in their stomachs. The currents were favorable to push these fry back onto the reef, which is why we saw such an abundance of the herbivore fry as well as oama and baby papios. Nature will work things out such that most of the abundance will be consumed by larger fish.

The Expo had a nice blend of products to buy and informational booths. Another must see Expo to visit next year.

Surgical strikes on a clear water day

September 18, 2014 By Scott Leave a Comment

With the wind and surf light, I thought today would be the day I’d finally get a decent sized papio.. I trolled the spot I had previously fished in large surf and was hoping the papio would be around in the calm, clear water. The first 3 live oama got ripped so hard it was difficult to pull the rod out of the holder but all unbuttoned in a few seconds. I got one oama head back; the other two oama were pulled off the double hooks.

large trailer hook on left

I was using a large Owner bait holder hook in the oama’s tail to prevent papio from swallowing the hook and maybe it prevented the aha (giant needlefish) or kaku (barracuda) from getting hooked easily. Those strikes were much harder than the papio strikes I had been getting and I never saw the perpetrator. When I checked on my fourth live oama bait, the oama was still nose hooked but there was a 4 inch papio foul hooked on the trailer hook! Funny that the little papio could get hooked but not the larger fish that were stripping the baits so ferociously.

I trolled dead oamas in between the live oama strikes and never got any hits. I think the water was so clear the aha or kaku could tell whether the oama was alive, and could aim it’s attack to miss both hooks.

If you thought trolling oama on a board was easy…

September 16, 2014 By Scott 2 Comments

…don’t. The hooking of papio once the trolling rig (mainline to floater to leader and two hooks) is properly deployed is the easy part. The hard part is dealing with two hooks on a rolling surfboard while trying to delicately scoop a live oama out of the bait bucket and hook it in its nose and tail. Every time I go out I snag just about everything with those hooks including my surf booties, clothes and finger. And the line coils seem attracted to my leash and booties.

Today, with the big surf and 15 mph wind, it was particularly frustrating. The rip current created backwash against the white wash coming in, so I was bobbing like a cork while trying to keep the hooks and line off my gear and body.

The predators (papio, kaku and aha) were still hunting at the top of the high tide and I caught a papio on a live oama, and another papio after an aha shredded and killed the next oama. Then I got such a gnarly tangle near the tip of my rod I had to paddle in to where I could stand, to cut the line free and re-rig. By the time I got back to the spot the predators were hitting, the larger papio were gone and I just had the smaller fish pull off my oamas.

landed before the tangles

The papio landed were 13 and 14 inches and pretty thick. At least I didn’t deep hook any small fish.

Great late season oama outing

September 13, 2014 By Scott 3 Comments

perfect oama catching conditions

Pete, part of the out-of-town duo I took fishing back in May, was back on Oahu with his family. He managed to free up for a few hours so I took him on his inaugural oama fishing trip. The oama were there in the South Shore shallows but didn’t want to bite for the first hour. I began to feel the pressure of being a lousy host, but we finally found a school of larger fish in deeper water that sniffed our baits. They eventually turned on and were fighting each other and the small papios for the bare hook.

The tide was rising enough to make them feed but not so steep that they would move to shallower water. Add calm winds that enabled us to peer down into the waist deep water, and the conditions were about as perfect as they could be.

oamas getting cozy

My oama will be used to restock the ones that died last night of ich. I’m hoping I can keep this batch free of parasites for more than a week. Click here to see how well the live oama worked.

deep fried goodness

Pete fried his oama up crispy along with one of the papio I caught on my last trolling trip. It was a hit at an island potluck. Sort of ironic that the papio ended up in a tray with the fish that were the cause of his undoing.

Thanks for contacting me!

September 11, 2014 By Scott Leave a Comment

In response to my request that readers contact me if they had any oama raising advice or wanted clarification on what I’ve posted, I received some really nice messages in the last few weeks.

One reader provided some general info about some North Shore oama spots which I was able to share with a female reader looking to take her sons oama fishing for the first time. The mom wrote back informing me that she went back to an Eastside spot she used to oama fish as a child and her sons caught 15 oama! Nice how that worked out.

Another reader and I have been corresponding, and it turns out he works with a close friend of mine whose hands are cradling these sand turtles.

And another contacted me after we chatted on the beach, and invited me to stop by for a cold one (ice water) next time I fish near his house!

I’d love to hear from more of you. Tell me what you like/don’t like about what I’ve been writing or just tell me how your fishing is going this summer. I know I’ve been in oama catching / oama trolling mode for the last few weeks. It’ll be over soon and I’ll be back to not catching anything of importance.

Click here to get to the contact form.

-scott

Big oama = bigger papio?

September 11, 2014 By Scott 1 Comment

these seemed larger before they got bent

I went back to troll the “strike every 5 minutes” hot spot. Took the jumbo sized oamas with the hopes that the small papio would leave them alone. The first two papio bit within 5 minutes and seemed larger so I bagged them. I thought they both were 13 inches head to tail but the one in the foreground looks smaller yeah? It was still curled from sitting in my game bag. The pliers are 11 inches long.

The papio that followed took about 7 minutes to strike and were the just legal or under legal size so I released them. One was a 4 inch papio that somehow dislodged the 5 inch oama and got hooked on the back hook! And the last papio landed was short but took the hook fairly deep in its gullet. I was able to unhook it but it didn’t revive well after trying to resuscitate it for 5 minutes. I had to eventually release it wounded since it’s illegal to possess a papio under 10 inches (head to fork). That was a downer.

I trolled two 3 day old dead oamas and they got bit too. My dad fished a very popular pier on a military base and said there were hundreds of 4 to 8 inch papio and very few legal ones. I guess we have to count our blessings and wait until these little guys become 5 lb papio.

The ebb and flow of oama life

September 10, 2014 By Scott Leave a Comment

I went to my reliable oama spot this week but got there when the tide was a little too high and still rising. The oama school was huddled up against the sea wall, warily watching for predators. A couple late eaters were caught and then the oama ignored my bait as the water level rose. Schools of 4 to 5 inch long papio and lai cruised on the outside like wolves circling a herd of deer.

At the peak 2 foot high tide, 8 inch papio attacked the school. Even after the larger predators left, the oama still didn’t eat until the water level dropped to about 1.5 feet. The 4 to 5 inch papio and lai were still around and when I hooked an oama, they chased it around even though the oama was just as large as they were. These papio and lai had grown up with the oama, and now they are almost large enough to take down an oama.

The water level dropped to about 10 inches as the sun was about to set, and the oama finally spread out across the sand and fed actively. I guess it was shallow enough to make it hard for predators to sneak up on them.

Life is tough when you’re a soft, tasty oama. Everyone including the childhood chums who swam with you want to eat you now.

The hunt for a bigger papio

September 8, 2014 By Scott Leave a Comment

I tried a deeper water spot a mile down from where I’ve been getting pestered by barely legal papios. This new spot had deeper channels leading to a 20 foot dropoff, but was also windier than my other trolling spots. The wind made it a bit of a workout to get out, even on a light trade wind day. After trolling the inner reefs for the last two months it was a little spooky to not see the bottom and the occasional wave breaking on the outer reef added to my uneasiness.

My live oama didn’t get any action, probably because it was on a 5 foot leader connected to a floater, so I happily made my way back to the inner reef. I headed in the direction of my familiar spot and expected the same kind of frenetic action, but the bites were infrequent and less aggressive. A few baits were pulled off the hooks, one hook was cut off, and the two barely legal papio I landed were a lot thinner than the ones I have been catching. I’m guessing there’s less bait around this area to fatten up the fish.

There was a different strike that didn’t feel like a papio. It ran in spurts like a small oio and immediately found the rocks. I didn’t feel rubbing but somehow the fish dislodged the hooks on a boulder and I had to break off the line. This had happened to me a couple times in the last month. I don’t know how roi feel when hooked but would imagine that roi were lurking in the bouldery reef waiting to ambush a wayward oama.

Well, I branched out to a deeper water area only to end up getting all my hits on the inner reef. I’m still looking for the first fish of the oama season to scream out line. All fish hooked were either purposely or inadvertently released.

Reef fish boom of epic proportions

September 5, 2014 By Scott Leave a Comment

Fish collectors and marine biologists have confirmed what nearshore divers have been saying since July. There are an incredible amount and variety of baby fish on the reef and flats. This excerpt from Coral Magazine confirms it. No wonder, back in July, I was complaining about weak strikes that scratched up my oamas instead of producing solid hookups. Click here to read about my frustrations back on July 25th.

The oama schools have been large and replenished since late June. Sardines have been in for a few weeks. Baby fish like kala and file fish, that are not normally seen in large numbers are on the protected, shallow reefs. Tons of baby papio, kaku and aha are cruising with the oama and the oama are eying them warily.

Experts and hobbyists are theorizing the reasons for this boom. I personally think this spring was warmer than normal and that triggered some species to spawn, which then triggered predatorial species to spawn. But what do I know, I’m just a guy that blogs about fish catches.

It’ll be interesting to see if next year is another boom due to El Nino/global warming, or a bust to counter balance this year’s surplus.

If you do catch undersized fish, do the responsible thing and return them to the ocean so they can help produce the next boom cycle.

Dead or alive, all the oamas got whacked!

September 4, 2014 By Scott 1 Comment

double hook trolling setup

The surf wasn’t as large as forecast so I went back to the spot I fished last week to see if I could find a bruiser papio amongst the barely legal ones. 5 oamas that I was medicating for ich died this morning so I took them along since they shouldn’t be consumed. With the 5 live ones, that made an even 10, much more than I normally take.

I paddled out to the start of the surf break and within a couple minutes I had a strike on a live oama that ended up cutting off the back hook. Dang kaku! Instead of wasting another live one I put out a fresh dead one and gave it 10 minutes to produce. Since I hadn’t caught anything on dead oama this year I wasn’t expecting much and checked my watch as I paddled around. 4 minutes later a 15 inch lai (leatherback jack) was hooked on the back hook. Not the big papio I was looking for but I was pleased that the dead bait worked. I put out another dead bait and 3 minutes later an undersized papio was hooked on the back hook. Still not the big papio I wanted so I put a live oama on and paddled parallel to the break. I checked the time and within 5 minutes a very small papio pulled the oama off the two hooks. Ugh… down to 3 live ones left I put another dead one on and this time a papio about the same size as the oama was hooked on the back hook!

And so it went, whether dead or alive, all the strikes occurred within 5 minutes of the bait hitting the water. All hit the back hook and a few keeper papio swallowed the hook deep where I had to use longnose pliers to pull it out of their gills. I’m using a pretty large Owner Ebi Baitholder hook as the back hook in the hopes that the long shank would prevent the kaku from biting through the line (please see pic). Yet the bigger fish are taking the hook deep as they inhale the oama tail first. That hook is almost too big to use on the tail of the oama and it definitely impedes the oama’s swimming ability.

Maybe I should try a circle hook and risk lowering my hookup ratio?

While all the dead oama got hit, the larger papio hit the live ones. I decided I’ve kept enough barely legal papios for now so all the fish were released.

Why are my captive oamas dying?

September 2, 2014 By Scott Leave a Comment

the good ole days

The oamas I caught early in the season lived in plastic tubs with external filtration for as long as 4 weeks. Eventually all the tubs had bouts of mass die offs and now I’m leery about risking losing another batch.

oama apartment living

To avoid putting all my oamas in one basket, so to speak, I now have them spread across 5 gallon buckets. The oamas haven’t experienced mass die offs in the buckets, but aren’t happy either and haven’t been eating.

I suspect some disease like “marine ich” is eventually spreading and reproducing in the tubs, and also believe the dying oamas emit some kind of toxic chemical that causes the others to die within minutes. This is the dark side of oama raising I guess.

I’ve treated some of the tubs for “marine ich” with some success, and try to pull dying oamas out before they can affect the others. If you have any additional advice please contact me. It’s very sad and frustrating to try to keep the little guys long enough to use them, only to lose a bunch over night.

Update – 9/12/2014 : Per the nice folks at Coral Fish Hawaii, I treated a few tubs and sick fish with copper. If I caught the ich early enough, the fish made a complete recovery, and the tubs have hosted fish without killing them. Keeping the oxygen infusion up seems to be more important than stabilizing the water temperature and salinity.

Oama – Papio season still red hot

September 2, 2014 By Scott 1 Comment

getting a little bigger

I was able to surfboard troll my deeper water spot because the winds were lighter and the waves were small. I ran into some fishing friends who just finished throw netting and they were just leaving when I hooked up with the 10.5 inch (head to fork) papio. Nothing like performing for an audience!

Something took my next two baits off my hooks. An hour into my trolling run, the 14 inch (head to tail) papio hit all the way out by the first break. I was about to reel in the oama to check it when the papio struck. I felt the initial strike as if I was whipping the live oama, very cool. 14 inches is a small papio but sadly, the biggest of the oama season for me. The larger papios others have caught were landed at first light. Ugh, I may have to start fishing earlier in the morning.

There are still some smaller oamas at the usual spots, but not as many as a week ago. Some of the oama we’ve hooked and lost were the 5 and 6 inch variety so those will be out to sea soon. Typically, oama season ends in August but this is an especially good and long season. Get your oama before they and the papio are unreachable.

Small papio continue to slam the oama

August 28, 2014 By Scott Leave a Comment

The pre-adolescent papio that were scratching the back of the oamas a month ago are now big enough to swallow the back hook. That’s fine if the papio are keepers (larger than 10″ head to fork) but bad if they’re undersized. I went up in hook size to avoid gut hooking the undersized fish, but still had to cut the line to release a deeply hooked 9 inch papio today.

Also landed a 3 ft aha (stickfish), had 2 oamas ripped off their hooks, and landed a legal papio on my last bait. I was trying an area I had never trolled before, and like the other spots I’ve recently visited, this one was full of pint sized papio.

It’s great that the bite has turned red hot lately, but sad that the hardest fighting fish of the season has been a stickfish!

I haven’t been taking any pics of the recent just legal papio. I just take 4 or 5 live oama with me to limit the amount of papio juvies I may hook.

Maybe I should troll a jumbo sized oama to deter the little guys from taking a bite?

The predators hit both hooks on the slack high tide

August 26, 2014 By Scott Leave a Comment

the pliers are 11 inches long

My captive oamas continue to expire prematurely, taking their tank mates with them. I’m convinced dying oamas let out a toxin that is hard to remove. I’ll blog about that and other difficulties in keeping oama alive, soon.

So without a supply of lively oamas, I planned to catch some fresh ones in time to troll them on the early afternoon rising tide. Turns out I’m a lousy oama catcher. A nice couple, Lance and Dianne, took pity on me and gave me some of their oamas, and yet I didn’t get out to troll them until the tide had almost peaked. The bite was as slow as the tidal movement so I was surprised to reel in the first kaku of the oama season. The kaku was lip hooked by the front hook and looked secure so I paddled away from the surf zone to delicately land the toothy, snapping creature. A feat not easily accomplished on a rolling surfboard. When I lifted the kaku it managed to flip and cut the line. Arrgghh, that was the first kaku of the oama season that didn’t cut the back hook off immediately and swim free.

I put on a new pre-tied leader and double-hooked another lively oama. Another kaku was hooked by both hooks, this time the hooks held and I was able to drop it into a dry bag and cut the leader off, all without losing a digit. I’m guessing the kaku like the slack tide since they often feed in placid water.

The slow bites slowed even more so I headed in and my clicker went off again. This time it was a 13 inch (head to tail) papio getting hooked on both hooks.

The first oama I trolled got weak and died on the hook. No bites. The 2nd, 3rd and 4th were lively and got hit hard.

Not exactly sure why it worked out this way but all three fish hit both the front and back hooks. No previous fish did that this season. Maybe the fish are really gulping down the oamas now? The last oama in the bucket earned its freedom.

The papio want their oama lively or not at all

August 20, 2014 By Scott Leave a Comment

still small but getting bigger

The papio are definitely coming onto the reef to dine on oama. And this year there are so many oama around that the papio are discriminating. I went to a deeper water reef area to troll oamas I had caught yesterday. 3 lively ones resulted in 3 papio. 2 freshly dead ones weren’t touched at all. Picky papio!

The first papio fell off my back hook as I was trying to measure it. The top hook ended up stabbing my finger but luckily didn’t go barb deep. Still sore though!

I was watching my orange floater behind me as I trolled over the spot I hooked the first papio and saw it go under. I thought I was seeing things until my ratchet went off. I bagged the 10.5 inch (head to fork of tail) papio and put a fresh dead oama on. Trolled all over for nada. Then I put on the second to the last lively oama and within a minute the 12 inch (head to fork of tail) papio hit.

With two papio in the bag I set the last lively oama free. The papio are hitting the oamas hard now. The trick for me is to find where the larger ones are. My previous spots are loaded with 8 inch papio with small man complexes.