Bait vs Lures, Round 3

December 12, 2014 By Scott 3 Comments

The tide was low and the wind was up so I wade fished a spot I normally board fish. I started with cut bait and when the small papios started biting on every cast I switched to a Makata strip. No bites on the strip so I switched back to bait. The action was much better than I had expected. Besides the countless 5 inch omilus, I caught a large mongoose fish and had some heavier fish unbutton. About an hr before sun down I hooked something that looked and felt like a small oio. When I brought it closer I was realized it was a 14 inch plus white weke.

giant oama

I had never caught a full grown white weke before, and it was weird to handle a fish that looked like an oama, just giant-sized. I wonder if the white weke and obake weke are always on the shallow reef or if it’s the season for them now. They’re fun to catch but I was really hoping for an oio that would smoke my reel.

weke of all sizes

Hopefully the adult weke plays nicely with the 5″ to 8″ oamas.

Summary: On the shallow, bouldery reef, cut bait trounced the strip lure once again.

Bait vs Lures, Round 2

November 26, 2014 By Scott Leave a Comment

25 MPH, North – North East winds on the flats made it difficult to cast at times and the tide was rising in the overcast evening. Made for some chilly wading. The 4 inch omilus were bothering the baits again so I just stuck with

cut baitt
Makata strip lure (clear ice)

Like the last time I fished the flats, the little omilus followed the strip lure but didn’t take the hook. On the cut bait I caught about 8 omilus, and besides a lizard fish, no other reef fish. Maybe the omilus were faster than the expected hinalea and humus?

As the sun was setting, in 8 inches of water, I hooked a fish that swam in straight lines, unlike an omilu. Turned out to be a 9 inch obake weke, about the size that Pete caught two trips ago. Funny that I’ve never caught them before and now two were landed on the last 3 trips. Maybe they’re part of the big “recruitment” bloom of reef fish?

obake weke swimming against the water jet

I released all the omilus but kept the obake weke. Here he is in quarantine waiting to meet his oama cousins and the bigger weke caught a month ago.

Summary: In tough conditions with pesky baby omilu, cut bait trounced lures once again.

Bait vs Lures, Round 1

November 21, 2014 By Scott 1 Comment

gold kastmaster with trailer

I fished the flats on an evening dropping tide and decided to embark on a small test to see what would be more effective, cut bait or lures. It wasn’t a scientifically controlled test by any means, and would have to run multiple times.

I was using a bait casting rig that let me fish the lures and bait slowly, near the bottom. A spinning setup would’ve worked also.

The three bait choices were:

cut bait
Makata strip lure (clear ice)
Kastmaster (3/8 oz gold with trailer), untipped and tipped with cut bait

The trade winds were strong and the fish activity was low. Unlike the previous trip to this spot where various reef fish were caught, only the small 4 – 6 inch omilus were chasing the baits. All the omilus were caught on the cut bait and a surprise 14 inch kaku was also hooked in the shallows on that setup. That kaku made two runs right at me and I had to jump out of its way!

The Makata strip lure was chased by the omilus but they just nipped at the tail of the strip and didn’t get hooked. The Kastmaster also got bumped but perhaps the single siwash hook I was using was too big for their little mouths. The cut bait on a smaller hook fit in the mouths of the fish easier.

Summary: On this day where the bite was slow, cut bait reigned supreme. If the fish were feeding voraciously, lures may have done better.

Fun flats whipping in less than ideal conditions

November 15, 2014 By Scott 6 Comments

Pete from NorCal was back and looking to go another round on the flats. Here’s how we did the last time we went hunting for late season oama. The tides were less than ideal during this week and the best option was to fish the wade-able low tide this evening and cast cut bait and Makata strips. The tide was falling, unfortunately, not rising.

obake weke on the shallow flats

Whipping from shore hasn’t yielded anything substantial recently and we only had a couple hours to fish, so we had low expectations. To make things even more challenging, Pete was using a freshwater spinning setup without much line. The cut bait was getting all the small papio bites so we stuck with that and worked our way out towards the surf break. Pete hooked something that fought like a small oio and had to tighten the rear drag on his small spinner to bring it in. It was the first obake weke I had ever seen in that area and it put up a very respectable fight. If we had quit then, it would have been a successful outing.

We had 20 more minutes to fish so we made it to a sandy channel in the shallow rubble and then every cast resulted in a strike. The 4 inch papio were swarming our baits, then I hooked a beefy Christmas wrasse that took line, followed by an almost legal omilu. Pete landed a grunting humuhumu.

Pete caught the target fish!

On his next retrieve, Pete’s reel started screaming. The fish pulled line in long bursts like an oio which really surprised me given the commotion caused by the previous fish landed. Oio are notoriously easily spooked. I expected Pete to get spooled on the light setup but he patiently worked the fish in, lost some line, and regained some. Finally we could see what it was, a 2 lb oio, the premier flats fish. I later felt Pete’s drag and it was set pretty tight from the battle with the obake weke. Pete masterfully manhandled his first ever oio with trout gear!

end of a successful day

He turned my camera phone on me to as I made my last cast.

All things considered, our short outing was very successful. All fish were released unharmed.

Season officially over yet papio still hit an oama

November 13, 2014 By Scott 4 Comments

out of season papio

The waves on the South Shore were down and the winds were very light this morning. I decided to check my deeper water spot that’s normally exposed to surf and wind. I hadn’t trolled oamas there in 2 months and I wasn’t expecting much after blanking at my other trolling spots. I still had a few oamas left in my tubs at home and it was really hard to take my pets out to use as bait.

The first live oama went untouched for an hour until a lizard fish somehow hooked itself on the back hook while the oama still dangled on the front hook. You would think an oama followed by a lizard fish would make an excellent presentation but nothing wanted them.

I replaced the two with a lively 5 inch oama and continued paddling around on my longboard. 30 minutes passed. The last two times I had trolled here, all the baits were hit within 10 minutes. I guess the epic oama season of 2014 finally came to an end.

I headed in, staying on the reef edge of the channel and my ratchet went off. The strike was completely unexpected and the fish felt very strong. I felt the line rubbing on the reef off and on and tried to paddle over to free it. Once it came free I buttoned down the drag and the fish came in fairly quickly, having spent most of its energy on the early runs. For some reason the 14 inch papio fought so much harder then the others caught during the oama season. Maybe it was upset that it fell for the out of season oama.

My take on all this is that the predators aren’t looking for oama anymore but if they happen to stumble upon one they’ll still eat it.

Possible spill causes fish die-off?

November 3, 2014 By Scott 3 Comments

Perhaps something like this will be posted soon

I paddled out on my longboard this morning to troll some moose oamas. 20 yds from the beach on Oahu’s Eastside, I ran into a brownish-orange foam in the scum line. That’s never a good sign. Trying hard not to get water in my eyes or mouth, I paddled through it and reached the break, where the water was less murky. My 6 inch oama went untouched after 20 mins so I put on a smaller, more bite-sized one and that went untouched also. This spot has produced all summer so it was very unusual to have such a quiet morning. Even if the papio were absent I would’ve expected to be pestered by the aha and kaku.

After an hour and half of paddling around in the chop I gave up and headed back in through the slightly scummy water. I was resigned to the fact that the epic oama season finally ended. After all, it is November. A spear fisherman met me at the showers and before I could remark about the brownish-orange foam, he said that the inner reef was full of dead fish. He noticed the foam also and said there were a lot of 4 inch papio and other reef fish lying on the ocean bottom, but saw some life past the breakers.

I was glad to have an excuse for not getting any hits but was concerned that we had been exposed to whatever killed the fish. He soaped up at the beach shower and I headed home to do the same. I also did a nasal rinse to flush out any bugs that might’ve made their way up my nose, and emailed my NOAA and DAR friends to find out how to report this disaster. Turns out that the national Coast Guard has a Spill Response Center you can call at 1-800-424-8802. I made my report and was later contacted by the local Coast Guard for more details. DAR will probably verify the extent of the fish die-off.

I wasted 5 precious oamas today (3 released before I knew how unsafe the waters were), and have a slight pain in my left ear. Hopefully tomorrow brings resolution to the spill and health to all who were in that water today.

Update:

11/5/2014 – I went back to the beach the next day to see if the brownish-orange foam was still present. The water had cleared and there were no dead fish on shore. The Coast Guard had done their check that morning also and hadn’t noticed what we experienced the day before. I did hear that some dead, baby menpachi and aweoweo were seen about a half mile west of this spot, and small flounder and a small kaku were found dead a half a mile east of this spot.

These fish deaths were witnessed the evening I had encountered the strange foam. A number of local agencies were notified and some suspect the cause of the foam and fish deaths was a bacteria or plankton bloom, similar to a “red tide”.

So many fish on the flats at low tide!

October 23, 2014 By Scott Leave a Comment

My friend Chester had the week off so I took a break from trolling oamas and dusted off the whipping rod. I hadn’t cast a rod in more than 3 months and it felt good to hear the bearings of the Calcutta TE 200 spin. I kept things simple and planned to fish cut bait.

I started by casting just the weight to wet the line and hooked a sand barracuda with no bait! When I put on some cut bait I started getting pestered by 4 inch omilus so I replaced the bait with a Makata strip lure. The presentation looked odd, with a big orange head and a long strip body, so I had low expectations. On the first cast I hooked something heavier and stronger, and was working it in when it unbuttoned. I’m guessing it was a bigger papio since I saw some cruising the shallows.

look how long the Makata lure is

A couple casts later I brought in a feisty 8 inch oama. I was super surprised that a oama that size would chase down a 3 inch lure and get hooked in its mouth. If the 6 inch plus oama caught the other week were “moose oama”, I don’t know if I should call this a mega oama or a mini weke. It’s the first oama or weke I’ve ever caught on a lure. I brought it home alive to either be a pet or live bait for a monster papio.

big hook for small mouth

Chester dragged cut bait for big oio on the outer reaches of the flat and I caught and released a few more 4 inch omilus inside. Then we saw some dark colored 5 to 8 lb oios cruising the sandy areas. We tried lobbing cut bait and lures in front of them but couldn’t make an enticing enough presentation.

All in all a great morning of large fish seen and unexpected fish hooked.

Trolling big oama 3 days before a tropical storm

October 16, 2014 By Scott 2 Comments

There was finally a break in the weather before Tropical Storm Ana is expected to hit Oahu in 3 days. The barometer was falling this morning which generally isn’t good. Since the weather is expected to be rainy days after the storm hits, I decided to take some big oamas and troll while the trolling was good.

I started with a 5 inch oama and it went untouched until I found a small sand pocket in the break. A 14 inch papio hit the back hook and I worked to bring it in before drifting into the surf zone. Not the bigger papio I was hoping for. I put on another 5 inch oama and before I reached that deep sand pocket a 13.5 inch papio hit. This one swallowed the back hook deep and when I unhooked it with my long nose pliers it coughed up blood so I had to keep it. Shucks, my plan was to let go the small papios for the remainder of the season.

I put on a moose oama caught earlier this week, to deter the smaller papio. Well I didn’t get any more papio bites but the aha, kaku and pipe fish all tried to take down the moose. They sliced and diced a couple of the moose but couldn’t turn them lengthwise to get hooked. Maybe 6 inch plus oama are too large for inshore reef trolling?

I’m not sure if the fish felt the falling barometric pressure and bit before the storm, or just ate normally. I hadn’t trolled this location for a few weeks, and after last week’s too warm conditions at my other spot, it was good to know this spot still produces.

papio soup and sashimi

The deep hooked 13.5 inch papio was much appreciated. My friend Dean’s mom made the traditional Japanese meal of sashimi and fish head soup. Oishii!

Hunting “Moose” Oama

October 13, 2014 By Scott 2 Comments

It’s the middle of October and the oama are still hanging around the safety of the shoreline. Mixed in are legitimate Moose-sized oama, practically junior weke. I found some 5 inch oama grubbing around in the shallow sand patches and was able to land a few without tearing off so I went hunting for the really big ones.

The 6 inch plus oama with the bright yellow tails were in deeper water, at times out of range of my straight pole. When they smelled my bait they’d charge it like a pack of ulua chasing a popper. Once hooked, the fluorocarbon 4 lb leader would make a hissing noise as the moose oama raced back and forth trying to pop the hook. I let the soft pole fully flex and tried to slowly work them up to the surface, then slid them out of the water and into my net. I lost a few but not nearly as many as I did when I tried horsing them up while they were still green. Read how I had even tried using a rod and reel to land them.

now that’s a moose

Hunting and landing these moose was the most fun I’ve had catching oama. Oama this size don’t often take a bait but they do tend to want to eat their last meal of the day an hour before sun down. They eat heartily in captivity and are hardy when trolled. The bigger papio like them and the bait stealers think twice about trying to pull them off the hooks. Every time I catch them I’m grateful because they could decide tomorrow to leave the safety of the shallows.

Less than ideal conditions = weak strikes

October 8, 2014 By Scott 1 Comment

Hoping to build on last week’s catch, I was chomping at the bit to get back to the spot. I first needed to restock my oama supplies and then had to wait for the brown water to clear. In the meantime the days with higher tides passed and I was debating whether to go out on an afternoon high tide of only 1.6 feet. Decided that worst case, I’d find out what happens on a relatively small afternoon tide.

The afternoon sun, combined with humidity and light winds, had heated the water to hot tub temperatures. The predators were either absent or sluggish. Without a lot of new, cold water coming in with the rising tide, I just registered some weak strikes that pulled off the oamas, left me a body-less head, and mauled my last bait. I’m theorizing that the predators didn’t have the energy to slam the baits hard enough to get hooked properly.

oama left side

This last oama was alive and swimming strongly over a shallow reef when something came up and chomped down on it sideways.

oama right side

The fish didn’t really run with the bait, it just held it in its mouth until I lifted the rod.

oama top view

Look how deep the wound is behind the head. The culprit could be the body snatcher that’s been leaving me with oama heads. I didn’t see the splash of an aha (giant needlefish) but it was in the location where baits have been mauled by aha. Does this look like an aha bite?

Lesson learned: During this unusually warm fall season, either fish days with a morning high tide, or days where the afternoon tide is close to 2 feet.

Papio season isn’t over, it’s just different

October 3, 2014 By Scott 2 Comments

best day so far

Since the “productive” spot still had some papio yesterday, I wanted to check on my other spot that had been filled with bait killing small papio and aha. I had let this spot rest for more than a month, waiting for the papio to be large enough to take the hook properly.

I ran into a fishing friend on the beach that had seen me land a papio at another spot a month ago. Always good to have a witness in case people are thinking I’m just photo shopping pictures! Click here to read what had happened that day. My friend, who is a world class oama catcher, gave me some pointers on where to troll today.

As I was about to paddle off, a guy called out to me, asking if I was the guy writing all these crazy posts about South Shore papio fishing. He explained that he had been searching the web to gather knowledge since he recently moved from the mainland, and recognized my surfboard rig from the blog pictures. Luckily he appreciated the blog info and wasn’t part of the fishing mafia that might want to censor some of the info being distributed!

eBay Calcutta 400 – half price!

Feeling good about the advice I got and the good will exchanged, I paddled to my go-to spot but only had yanked baits to show for it. Ugh, the bait stealers were still around and even they weren’t biting that frequently. Down two baits, I had five good sized oama left. Then it slowed even more. An hour of no bites went by and I was beginning to write this spot off. Remembering the advice my friend had given me on the beach, I paddled further down reef than I normally do and looked for the sandy cut in the surf break that would allow me to fish deeper without getting hit by the waves. Bam! My rachet on the newly purchased, used eBay reel went off. It sounded good as I tried to remember how to fish a bait caster without a level wind; basically a very small conventional reel. The fish pulled drag, then came in pretty easily. Turns out it was a 5 inch papio foul hooked on its dorsal fin. Hoping it was meant to be a practice fish, I put on oama #4.

how heavy does this look?

Bigger Bam! The rachet went off again and the fish felt much more solid. Took a little while to remember how to crank and evenly distribute line. When I looked up I was close to getting battered by waves so I tightened the drag a bit and worked the fish in. 16 inches, largest this season, on a new (used) reel. Yay!

I put oama #5 on and paddled back to the 20 ft x 20 ft break in the reef. Smaller Bam! A hard fighting, elongated 13 inch papio came in. Thinking I didn’t want to fish out this little spot in the reef I headed in. Halfway to the beach I put on oama #6 just to see if there were fish closer to shore. Big Bam! The drag pulled and it felt like another bigger papio but turns out I had foul hooked this papio on its dorsal fin also. They must’ve been slamming the fish in the middle and getting hooked on their fin as they tried to make their getaway. Bait stealers eventually get their due. This last one was another stretched out, not so deep, 13 incher. I was about to let it go since it just had a small hole in its fin, but decided to keep it for my advice giving friend.

3 papio in the bag, I gave my last oama his freedom. I ran into another friend on the beach who has really helped me figure out how to fish this spot over the last year. Proudly showing off my catch, I asked him how much the 16 incher weighed. His mental “Hilo scale” put it at 1.5 lbs while I was hoping it was a legitimate 2 pounder. I couldn’t find my fish scale at home so I weighed myself on the bathroom digital scale, and then myself holding the fish. The fish varied between 1.8 and 2 lbs. I’ll take the 2 lbs!

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.

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.

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.