The wind and rain forecast was worse at my preferred Windward spot so I tried an area that is normally more forgiving. Forgiving it was not, with 10 – 12mph onshore winds to start that increased to 15mph plus. It was hard to fish, and the target species (uku, opakapaka, weke nono, moana kali) did come up on the damashi but they were all babies. It seems like this area holds recently spawned fish in the Spring that keep biting when the older, smarter fish don’t.
When I was pulling my kayak up the beach I noticed a shore fisherman casting and retrieving his lure at a fast pace. He then started to sift the sand with a long handled net. He was trying to catch sand turtles (mole crabs) for bait but wasn’t able to find them in the blind. I gave him my frozen opelu bait so he could use it on a piece of line and attract the sand turtles to him. We talked story for a bit, then I left him to cleanup, which went quicker since there were no fish to tend to. 
The shore fisherman walked up to me at the parking lot, carrying a still alive big oio! His name is Teddy and he said he was able to catch 2 big sand turtles and since he wasn’t planning to dunk, he put one on his hook he was whipping grubs with a plastic bubble filled with water. He casted out pretty far with a 7ft Roddy Hunter pole, 10lb Ande mono on his Shimano Sedona HG 2500 reel and 12lb JLine fluorocarbon leader.
He put the rod in his rod holder with the drag kind of loose and when he looked up line was peeling out! The big oio almost spooled him yet he was able to avoid all the coral heads in the shallow area he was fishing. Masterclass level of fishing with light gear!
He got his scale from his truck and the fish weighed a bit over 7lbs, which made the accomplishment even more incredible. Teddy called his friend to pick it up and iced the fish down with my unused bag of ice. The friend happily grabbed it to make lomi oio, and Teddy went back to see if there were more oio looking for sand turtles.
Seeing Teddy’s success made the sting of my bolo head less severe.
Nice job, Teddy! O’io love dem sand turtles…Moi too.. Many years ago, my friend and I ran into a guy at a beach on the windward side using sand turtles. This was in the early 2000s, and I had read of guys using it but had never seen it done before. We watched him bang about a half dozen bones in a couple hours. You could tell he had been doing it for a while, and knew this spot well. Surprisingly, you do not see many sand turtle imitations used by fly fisherman.
Hi Jason,
It’s funny, some friends told me that they haven’t caught much on sand turtles but I do think they work when you can keep ’em on the hook. Weke love ’em too.
And I thought orange colored flies were simulated sand turtles ripe with roe?
-scott
I think some use thread to secure them to the hook. We tried them and got a few strikes but no hookups. It’s work to catch them, we had to change bait more often, We didn’t have the patience for it and ended up going back to ika strips or Aku belly.
Orange is a favorite with Hawaii fly fisherman. You won’t see it used for bones in many other places, other than maybe Christmas Island. The original rationale had more to do with visibility in low light conditions, than it was about mimicking a specific prey item. Some folks, myself included, have a theory that with bones, it’s got less to do with how accurately a fly represents something real, and more to do with whether it looks like something that can be eaten. In other words, I’m not sure the fish actually stops to think whether a fly looks like anything specific.
Interesting and very likely theory. For my soft plastic lures I use to catch opelu, often I use colors that stand out the best under the lighting conditions that may not represent something opelu eat, but they still work.
Sand turtle sandwich wrap dat bugger with ika red bead helps too
Nice! The red beads make it look like eggs?