Holoholo: The Bait Is In, Realistic Lure testing

June 2, 2026 By Scott 3 Comments

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!

Mid August: Oama still biting good – maybe I was wrong?

August 19, 2025 By Scott 8 Comments

Oama came in very early this year, at the beginning of June. That’s at least a month earlier than normal. I thought the oama season would wane by now but it looks like more waves of oama have come in to some, but not all the regular spots.

There aren’t a lot of oama in these spots, but the ones there are catchable with the right tide, bait and technique. Papio are having a hard time passing up a live or fresh dead oama. The tackle shops are kinda low on the oama poles, hooks, bait buckets etc so you may have to shop around to replenish your gear.

Normally most spots begin to dry up by the end of September so you still have a month to get some oama for bait or to eat.

Early Summer Report and Prediction: Shore, Kayak and Boat

July 7, 2025 By Scott 6 Comments

I’m writing this in early July, with the peak fishing season a month away. Here’s how it’s been going so far, and how I think it will end up, based on weather indications.

The La Nina pattern of cooler water has ended and water temps are returning to “normal”. We didn’t get much rain in the Winter, and the mango crop wasn’t good. That usually means that the bait fishing season won’t be very good either, and without bait, the predator fishing will be a challenge.

Halalu have been in, and the oama began to show in early June, which is a month and a half early. The oama schools have been small, so that seems to be an indication that this oama season will be brief. Hope I’m wrong.

The early, larger papio have been whacking the piles so get out before they’re gone.

The ulua season, normally peaking in the late Spring hasn’t been so good either. Neither has the offshore boating season been. But kayakers who can get live bait early in the morning, continue to defy the odds and get shibi ahi (tuna under 100lbs).

Being out of a La Nina period is good news, so the coming Fall should be an improvement overall. Keep fishing; can’t catch fish from the couch!

Bolo headed on the kayak but got an assist for this shore caught big oio!

April 18, 2025 By Scott 6 Comments

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. 🙂

We split up, friend went shallow for oio, I went after opelu. Kayak fishing during a rain storm.

November 11, 2024 By Scott 2 Comments

I had been under the weather and missed a few light wind days. I needed a calm, safe day to ease back into offshore kayak fishing. Guy, who I last fished with more than 1.5 yrs ago, and hadn’t kayaked since, wanted an easy day to make sure his equipment and body still worked. There looked like some rain but light wind on the Windward side on a rare day our schedules aligned so we made the plan that he would stay inshore and troll for papio, and dunk for oio. I would head out to the bait spot and try to catch opelu and other bottom dwellers on the damashi rig.

We drove through heavy rain and ponding water but our destination just had moderate showers. The wind was light as we launched but half a mile out, I began to get hit with increasingly stronger onshore wind and chop, 15mph with higher gusts. It was a slow slog to push through all that, taking much longer than normal. 2 miles from shore, I lost radio contact with Guy probably due to all the showers and mist.

Fish bite well on overcast, rainy days and I had high expectations. I turned on my old GoPro Session 4 I had mounted to the bow of the kayak, to share a view of what it looks like when I’m trying to catch opelu on the damashi rig. Sure enough, the opelu were in the mid-water column and hit all 3 of my hooks. If I could stay on top of the school and drop on them, they’d bite. You’ll be able to see the action on the video below.

The fish like foul weather but me, not so much. I was socked in and couldn’t see land, and the swirling currents kept spinning me around. I had to use my fish finder’s compass to figure out which direction I was drifting. It was so choppy and swirly I almost got sick, and had to do all I could to clear my head.

I really wanted to stay and bottom fish with the damashi but I had live opelu after all, so I put one out with a sliding weight and paddled around the area for a bit. Eventually that line got tangled with my damashi line since I was spinning around so much. When I checked the bait, it had been pulled off. I gave up on live baiting and focused on catching stuff on the bottom. I dropped the camera rig on good marks but didn’t hook anything. Was really hoping to capture some interesting footage.

Occasionally Guy and I were able to hear each other for a garbled sentence or two so we both knew the other was ok. I think my old vhf radio was at fault and probably doesn’t have the range it did when it was new. It sounded like the papio trolling was slow inshore.

I was leaving the bait area at 2pm and ran across some really good marks. So I dropped the damashi down again and a strong fish busted off a branch line but a nice lai (leather jacket) came up. I hate handling lai because its dorsal and anal fins have venom, but figured Guy could eat it and use the skin to make lures, so I snipped the offending spines and kept it.

The next couple of drops yielded opelu so I tried to catch as many as I could (see the video) but eventually other fish like lizardfish and the yellow barbelled goat fish hit the damashi baits. Even nabeta were in the feeding frenzy.

I ended up with 18 opelu for the day, my best so far.

I started to head in and got in radio range of Guy. He said he was anchoring in shallow water and using some freezer burnt tako (octopus strips), and caught a small oio. As I got closer to him he landed an even bigger oio that fought like a white papio, with a lot of head shakes. Nice!!

Guy said the shallow inshore waters were eerily still with steam coming off the surface. Such a contrast from the conditions I experienced. Here’s the video.

Guy’s family wanted raw fish dishes, so he sashimi’d the lai, made lomi out of the oio (2.5lb and 4lb) and made a simple poke (inamona, salt, dried shrimp) out of the opelu.

He’s drying the lai skin to make lures.

Another friend’s wife Mayumi is from Japan and would eat fish everyday if she could. They don’t buy whole, local fish so I wanted to see what she thought of opelu and nabeta.

She deep fried the nabeta enough to eat the skin and scales but not the bones. She said the opelu tasted very similar to the saba (mackerel) she eats in Japan and really appreciated both fish.

I vacuum sealed the smaller opelu and froze them for bait. In hindsight I wish I had caught more since so many people enjoy eating opelu.

Holoholo: Shoreline Catch Report 7/1/24

July 2, 2024 By Scott 8 Comments

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!

If you wanna see what it looks like catching daytime opelu on a kayak (video)

December 11, 2023 By Scott Leave a Comment

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.

Mid-Sept: Have the Oama and Halalu seasons peaked? Maybe not.

September 19, 2023 By Scott 4 Comments

This has been the best oama season since maybe 2017? They came in by early August and kept coming in. A friend reported that the oama fishers have thinned but the oama are biting really well in the evening with papio hitting the piles.

Halalu came in thick in some spots and bit like crazy. They were so close in a few not-so-secret places, that a straight pole with bait was enough to fill a bucket. That appears to have peaked, but they are still around.

The bigger 5 to 8lb papio were seen and caught early in the season, and now the the 1 to 3 lb papio are hitting the piles. Fish around the piles with oama or whipping lures before the season ends. Who knows if next year will be as good as this year?