Best conditions to score papio

August 12, 2014 By Scott Leave a Comment

best day so far

After trolling oamas aimlessly for a month and a half, I noticed a pattern as to when and where I get most of my strikes. These conditions apply to dunking and whipping also.

First third of the rising tide
Cool, moving water; not still, sun warmed water
In front of the surf break (I’m not going past the surf break)
Bouldery terrain with a mix of sand and dark rocks
Edge of channel and bouldery reef

And for those trolling oama:

4 to 6 foot fluorocarbon leader
front hook through nostrils, rear hook past the ventral (anal) fin
30 to 75 feet away from you
liveliest oama (but wounded or freshly dead still work if that’s all you have)

Please keep in mind I haven’t caught anything big this season but I am getting a lot of strikes when the above conditions come together.

It’s not worth fishing during heavy storms

August 8, 2014 By Scott 2 Comments

I’m writing this as the downgraded Tropical Storm Iselle passes by Oahu. There are a lot of valid reasons to avoid fishing during bad weather. Strong winds, heavy rain, rogue waves, polluted runoff…

And in my recent experience the fish stop biting before the bad weather hits. They feel the drop in atmospheric pressure and hunker down until the system passes. Even the oamas in my tubs are doing that. During this present storm they ate a little and then settled on the bottom of the tub.

So its best to sit out the bad weather, let the brown water clear, and then resume fishing. The fish will have ended their hibernation and be eating to make up for lost time.

Early oama, late papio?

July 7, 2014 By Scott Leave a Comment

oamas in captivity

Oama season traditionally peaks in August so the fact that they’ve been seen at the usual spots appears to indicate an early start. From my informal poll of the shore fishermen I met recently, it’s been a solid start of the season but the papio haven’t followed them in yet. The results of 3 surfboard trolling outings support that: a few body-less oama returned, a clean cut leader and a sub-legal omilu.

We can only hope the papio realize the oama are already in. In the meantime I have to perform daily water changes to keep my oama alive and healthy. And refrain from naming them.

How good is your “oama eye”?

June 24, 2014 By Scott 7 Comments

It’s often pretty difficult to locate the traveling school of oama. With glare, wind chop and a lot of ground to search, it takes a trained eye to spot the oama schools.

Can you see the small school in this picture?

Can you see the oama?

Polarized sunglasses cut a lot of the glare. This is a simulation of how it would look with polarized sunglasses. I zoomed in on the school to highlight it. They’re traveling toward the upper left hand corner of the photo.

Ah, there’s the oama!

The first third of the battle is finding the oama. Then you have to catch them, and then keep them alive long enough to use them properly as bait. Here’s some tips on how to keep them alive and healthy.

Gearing up for the summer’s halalu and oama runs

June 18, 2014 By Scott 25 Comments

oama gear

Fishermen are discreetly checking their favorite spots to see if the halalu and oama have made their early arrival. When these early summer fish are found, don’t expect to hear about it unless you have a really connected friend.

In the meantime, you can gear up with proper footwear, straight poles, dunking gear, tackle and live bait buckets.

I’ve never fished for halalu but have targeted the oama over the years. Oama show up in same sandy areas year after year. Early in the season the school is small and flighty so the early season fisherman will try to target them without tipping off his oama fishing competition.

It’s importantly to wear a hat and polarized sunglasses to scan the sandy bottom, and to tread very lightly. Ask the tackle shops to recommend the proper hook, line and split shot, as well as pointing you to the fiberglass straight poles. If you can find the wrap around the waist net, that would make it very easy to drop your oama into that net to unhook it. Otherwise a small red landing net would suffice.

The yellow Frabill Flow Troll live bait bucket with spring loaded door will make it much easier to add an oama. I have the non-spring loaded types also and I’ve lost a lot of oama opening or shutting the door’s latch. I’ve seen the Frabill Flow Troll at Roy’s Fishing Supply, McCully Bike and even Target at times. Keep your precious oama alive on the way home with a Promar live bait aerator or similar bait pump. McCully Bike sells the Promar pump for about $10.

Hooking the nibbling oama is an art. I sucked at it because I was trying to feel the bite and then set the hook, but the oama really are feeling the bait with their whiskers before deciding to nibble on it. The recommended method is to use a short pole and short length of 1 – 2lb test line. Attach a hook to the end of the line, with a split shot about 4 inches up. Lower your bait to the bottom. When you feel your split shot hit bottom, raise it up so your bait is slightly off the bottom. If you see oama approach your bait, wait a few seconds and lift your rod tip in a motion up and away from your body, almost as if you were skimming the water with your rod tip. If you don’t hook the oama while it’s eating your bait, you may at least hook it while its whiskers are over the bait. Watch an experienced fisherperson hook oama and emulate. Hook sets are free so swing away.

Here’s some info on keeping your oama alive as long as possible.

Kaku at the He’eia Fishpond

June 14, 2014 By Scott 1 Comment

Paepae o He’eia fishpond at minus tide (zoom in to see the fisher folk on the wall)

Some friends and I had the privilege of fishing the Paeapae o He’eia fishpond on their first predator eradication day of the summer. The purpose of these predator eradication days is to provide some education about the ocean and the working fish pond, and lessen the predatory pressure the herbivore fish feel from the kaku, papio, toau and tilapia. So you can spend a day fishing and picnicking with friends and family, and feel good that you’re helping the pond!

The good folks at the pond welcomed us, provided an orientation tour for those who were interested and made sure we knew what we needed to know to stay safe.

Soon we were off and fishing. Right away, small kaku were brought up on bait by others but it took our group 3 hours to catch our first one. We had to wait for the tide to rush in through the “makaha” gates in order to get the kaku wildly feeding on the bait fish.

The kaku bit our flashy gold and silver/blue kastmasters and preferred the smaller 3/8 oz size to the 1/2 oz size but the 1/2 oz size did yield the largest fish. It was a challenging day in a very relaxing setting surrounded by happy families who out fished us with their Snoopy rods.

don’t be too impressed…

Looks like a great catch but if you zoom in, you’ll notice that the Sprite can is a diminutive 7.5 ouncer! Our job was to eradicate predators so out they went.

To learn more about the Paepae o He’eia Fishpond and their charter to preserve the Hawaii fishpond culture and heritage, please visit them here.

Live bait: Sand turtles – not really a turtle

April 28, 2014 By Scott 13 Comments

sand turtles

Sand turtles are called sand crabs or sand fleas on the Mainland. Reptile lovers can rest easy, they are a crustacean that burrow in the sand near the water’s edge. They are often caught on sloping beaches with fine sand, but are even present on grainy, pebbly beaches as those in the picture were.

They seem to always be present until you try to catch them. My theory is that they don’t like the heat of day, so early in the morning or in the late afternoon, on a low tide, may be best.

The most comprehensive writeup regarding capture, preservation and use as bait refers to the Florida version but all that’s mentioned applies to our sand turtles too. Click here for that guide.

ika tied to a beach vine

Traditionally fisherpeople in HI would use string or cord they found on the beach and attach some kind of bait on one end, and tie the other end to a stick. If left to be pushed around with the incoming water, eventually a swarm of sand turtles could be dug up nearby. A more streamlined version is to simply zip tie the bait to a stick and stake the stick in the water, with the bait buried. A piece of ika, chosen for its strong scent and toughness, is a popular bait. Click here for an even easier way to catch sand turtles.

The sand turtles molt like other crabs and shrimp, and the fish can tell the soft shell versions from the regular versions. Fish also love the females that are carrying orange eggs. If you’re lucky enough to have either soft shell or egg laden sand turtles, use those first.

On the mainland, the fish that eat the sand turtles just gulp them down so the hook point can run through the top of the shell, but here on our reefs we have a lot of nibblers that will try to suck out the good stuff and leave you with an empty shell.

The best way to hook the sand turtle is to turn it over and place the point of the hook through the “digger” or slender triangular piece that starts from the turtle’s back and points forward. That will prevent the turtle from burying itself. Drive the point through the top of the shell and then bring it back through the top so the point of the hook ends up facing downward.

You can dunk the sand turtle or slow drag it along a sandy bottom. Moi, oio, goat fish and papio love them, as well as the other reef denizens you may not want to catch.

For a summary of other bait and lures you could use, click here.

Live bait: Oama, long live the King!

April 14, 2014 By Scott 3 Comments

raising oama

If you google for “oama”, eventually you will come across hits for our current President (this is written in 2014). But if you fish in HI, you would know that oama are juvenile “weke” or goatfish that arrive in the shallow sandy areas between early July and late September to flee their many predators. You’ll also know that fishing with oama during this “season” is the best time of the year to fish for papio (jack crevalle). Some people only fish during this period and pack their gear away the rest of the year.

There is much information on what beaches to find them and how to catch them. Sometimes the catching is easy, sometimes it’s really hard. The best way to catch them is to have an experienced person show you how it’s done.

Every oama you catch can potentially be converted into a papio. While it’s an art to catching the oama, it’s a science to keep them alive long enough to use them for bait. Here’s what I learned the hard way, at the expense of the poor oama.

Oama are a schooling fish that are comforted by the company of their friends. It’s ok to keep quite a few of them together.
It’s not enough to keep them in a bucket of salt water with an aerator going. Heat and their own ammonia kills them. Keep them in an aerated, cool place, and change their water daily. A large cooler in the shade will do, and to increase their chances of survival you can use an ammonia detoxifying agent like Ammo Lock to neutralize the bad chemicals in their water. You can buy Ammo Lock in a pet fish store. Keep their holding pen dark and the oama will be much less stressed.
A dying oama seems to give off strong toxins that kill the others. Remove dying or dead fish immediately and dose with the Ammo Lock.
If you have the luxury of a tank with filtration, you can actually keep oama alive for a long time. Just don’t get too attached to the cuddly, whiskered cuties. I did and couldn’t put a hook through them so I had to wait for them to die before I used them!
If you plan to use the oama for bait within a week you don’t have to worry about feeding them but if you really want to you can get some frozen Mysis shrimp from the pet store. Start with very little because they won’t be feeding well initially. If they don’t eat the shrimp you’ll have to remove them because it will cloud the water. Some people use brine shrimp but I haven’t had good luck with that. Just feed what you can see them completely eat in a minute or so.
Oama are fairly fragile and most of the initial ones will die. After administering last rites, if you want to preserve them for future bait you can do the following. Lay them out, salt their bodies with rock salt, and vacuum seal them in a bag if that’s available. That’s the best way to freeze them.

I trolled my frozen, salted oamasickles from my surfboard last year and they worked almost as well as live oama. They did spin as I pulled them through the water so I needed to connect my fluorocarbon leader to my main line with a ball bearing swivel, replacing the standard ball swivel.

For other bait and lure options please click here.

What’s the best bait or lure to use for nearshore fishing in Hawaii?

April 2, 2014 By Scott 28 Comments

modified kastmasters

I was a lure fishing purist. I even dabbled with tying flies and customizing Kastmaster lures. It seemed more sporting to fool a fish to bite something man-made, and lures were a lot easier to acquire than bait. But I got skunked way too many times and reluctantly tried dead bait, and then live bait. Lure fishing in HI has its place but bait, particularly live bait, is KING.

Bait and lures can be broken down into the following categories:

Live bait – oama (juvenile goatfish), halalu (juvenile big eyed scad mackeral), nehu (Hawaiian anchovy), o’pae (shrimp), sand turtles (mole crabs), etc
Dead/cut bait – oama, tako (octopus), ika (squid), “California” shrimp, aku belly, etc
Scented lures – Berkley Gulp, Berkley Powerbait, etc
Unscented lures – plastic grubs/strips, flies, feather jigs, metal spoons, metal jigs, swimming plugs, etc

There’s too much detail to cover in one post so I’ll summarize the categories and cover them in future posts.

Live Bait

The best live bait for the larger nearshore fish, by far, is live oama. Oama school up in the shallow, sandy areas in the late summer because the predator fish are hunting them mercilessly. Halalu season overlaps with oama season, so the summer and early fall is the best period to nearshore fish. If you can catch nehu, `opae and sand turtles and fish them near where you caught them you’ll have much better odds than using dead bait or lures.

Click here to read about the basics of oama fishing.

Click here to read about keeping your oama alive as long as possible.

Click here to read about catching sand turtles.

Click here to read about catching regular `opae.

Click here to read about catching the larger `opae lolo.

Dead Bait

papio caught with frozen oama

Animals release chemicals when they die and thus, smell differently than alive. Freezing bait changes their chemical makeup further. So a defrosted bait definitely smells different to a fish than a live bait. If properly handled and frozen, oama and tako are effective defrosted bait but are much better used freshly dead. Aku belly is much better used fresh. Ika and shrimp should be cut up in their proper presentation size, salted and then frozen to prevent them from getting too mushy.

Scented Lures

There are a number of lures that are impregnated with scent to smell like the bait they are imitating. Berkley’s Gulp lures are the best known and come in many shapes. I’ve tried them with moderate results. Fish in HI that are attracted by smell, like humus, hinaleas, rock fish seem to like these lures. Others may have had better results but the best fish I’ve caught with them were moana. Because they are actually made from a fish food substance, the lure action isn’t as pliable as the better soft plastics.

Unscented Lures

Bait fish and crustaceans in Hawaii are very quick moving because the warm water keeps their metabolism up. Fast moving, jerky lures often do well imitating these creatures. The very popular plastic bubble pulling a plastic strip/grub or fly is very effective when popped erratically because the popping makes the predators think they’re missing out on a feeding frenzy. Metal spoons like Kastmasters and Krocadiles, cast well and can be jigged deep. The new metal jigs with assist hooks can be cast out and retrieved in deeper water, or fished vertically from a boat or kayak. Lipped and non-lipped swimming plugs imitate bait fish and are great whipping and trolling lures.

Click here to read about modifying Kastmasters.

Click here to read about my favorite unscented lures of 2016.

Click here to read how well the Japanese Domestic Model (JDM) sub-surface lure has worked, right out of the gate.

Click here if you were wondering if JDM whipping lures were worth the higher price.

Click here to check out the Store to purchase JDM whipping lures, jigs and flies (if they aren’t sold out).

“Tah-bees”, do I really need them?

March 16, 2014 By Scott 1 Comment

tabis

The Japanese tabis, pronounced “tah-bees”, are about the dorkiest footwear you could wear and most beginner fisherpeople try to avoid wearing them as long as they can. But if you have to walk on slippery wet rocks, or sharp reef, nothing is more protective and sure footed. Tabis have thick rubber protection around the toe area to prevent stubbing, and have a felt bottom to provide grip on slippery surfaces that rubber can’t provide. Yeah old sneakers, surf booties and even reef walkers look cooler, but eventually you’ll slip and fall, or get poked through to your less-than-luau feet.

tackle bag

And if you’re wading and fishing, do yourself a favor and get some kind of over-one-shoulder tackle bag to keep your gear out of the water. I know, the bag looks like a lady’s purse so it’s not gonna help your fashion cause, especially if you’re wearing tabis, but it will be handier to access than a backpack and will be worn higher than a fanny pack. Attach pliers and a line snipper on a retractable spring and you won’t have to worry about dropping your tools in the drink.

If you’re gonna spend a lot of time in the water and sun, you’d be wise to accessorize with a hat and polarized sun glasses. I’ll leave the style details up to you.

Catching ‘opae for bait

February 23, 2014 By Scott 2 Comments

Small and large ‘opae

The small, translucent Hawaiian shrimp called ‘opae is one of the best baits for near shore fish. Years ago the larger shrimp referred to as ‘opae lolo could be readily caught but now it’s hard just to find an inch long regular ‘opae. ‘Opae are found where fresh water meets salt water, often in some slow moving brackish water. Two well known, kinda yucky spots are the Ala Moana Beach Park lagoon and the Ala Wai canal. Click here to read about catching the coveted `opae lolo.

There are other more closely guarded spots on Oahu that have some ‘opae. Look for them against rock walls with brackish water algae growing. They seem to spread out during the day and cluster on rock walls and piers at night. Shine a light and look for a pair of eerie red eyes shining back.

Scoop up a bunch of them and keep them alive in a bucket with some aeration. When you’re ready to use them, carefully thread one on a hook and fish with a floater. Be ready to set the hook when your floater goes under, just about every carnivorous creature on the reef will want a taste of that offering.

There are even some salt water pet stores that sell `opae as live food for marine fish. Those `opae are fairly small but may be great for the smaller reef fish you want to hook. I recently saw a store selling them at 6 for $1.