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Oama came in a bit late this year, from most accounts, a few days after the 1st of August. They seem to be on the North, South and East sides but haven’t settled in to bite really well yet. Hopefully throw net poachers don’t take ’em or spook ’em before the oama reinforcements come in.
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!
A good friend, Scott, contacted me saying he was gonna take his 9 yr old son Dylan fishing and wanted to know where he should go. They were back home on Oahu visiting family and earlier on this trip, they had tried to whip for papio and catch oama but the fish weren’t in those spots. I texted the Holoholo writers asking for suggestions and they told me of a Windward spot that was kid friendly with bathroom nearby, that had bamboo-pole-kind fishing. My afternoon was free and I hadn’t seen Scott in 8 yrs so I asked if I could join them and hopefully we’d manage to get Dylan a few fish.
I hadn’t oama fished since 2019 and had to find my old tackle. I found the old oama poles but couldn’t find any spare small oama hooks or split shot so I brought those poles with buss up line and hooks, and the top half of a spinning rod. Didn’t need a bait bucket or bait pump since we didn’t plan on keeping anything. The net ended up staying in the car. Scott picked up a longer telescopic pole and split shot at Nankos.
We started fishing a couple hours before the peak afternoon King Tide and chummed up fish you’d see in a salt water aquarium along with some well fed balloon fish but the damashi-sized hooks I put on the two longer poles may have been too big, and Scott and I only managed to land two small pualu (surgeonfish). A few hours passed and we were hot and hungry, heading back to the car when one of the uncles there showed us where catchable oama were and gave us his leftover secret baits. Don’t ask me what they were ‘cuz I can’t reveal them!
Pieces of the secret bait brought in the whole school of oama, with baby papio dashing in every so often to grab some pieces. The big hooks couldn’t hook the fish so I got the crusty oama poles out of the car. 1 didn’t have a hook on and the other 2 had dried up bait stuck on the hooks! The hooks looked rusty and a little dull but we gave them a try, missing a lot of oama before we all got a few that were put back in the water. These were Dylan’s first oama ever, and Scott’s first in years. The uncle that blessed us really saved the trip and we passed that on by giving our leftover bait to the guys that fished near us.
Meanwhile, Holoholo writer Pono checked an oama spot on the North Shore with friends and they quickly caught a bunch and ended up releasing them alive since the papio weren’t around. Catch & Release Oama, kind of unheard of, but was a reminder that oama fishing in its purest form is about enjoying the outdoors and sharing that experience with others.
Oama and halalu are full bore now. Papio should be full bore soon. Enjoy them while they’re in.
It’s the last week of July and the El Nino has been warming the air and water for a few weeks. We expected that to kick off the oama, halalu and papio seasons but it seems like they all just recently started picking up. Halalu are in a few of the regular spots, in large piles and have been attracting papio and even ulua. Oama are beginning to fill in at the regular spots, and still look like they just swam in from the deep.
Since this is a transitional year from La Nina to El Nino, with the scientists predicting it will just be a moderate El Nino, maybe the fishing season will be similar to how it used to be: oama and halalu will peak in August and thin out by October; papio will be hitting the early piles now and not be as showy by September, but still catchable if you put out a live bait.
Now is the time to whip near the bait piles in the early morning and late evenings as the predators try to ambush the bait in the low light. To help with that, we have restocked our Japanese Domestic Model (JDM) lure supply with what was so successful in 2018 and 2019.
Go to the Store > Newly Added to see the recently added products, or select the product category you’re interested in.
Traditionally, oama seasons starts in August, and the peak season starts at the end of August. With it being a warm El Nino year, we’re expecting a good oama season although there haven’t been large, catchable schools yet at the normal places.
If you’re new to oama fishing, or need a refresher, click here to read the comprehensive oama fishing guide.
The oama made it into the regular spots by the first week of August and continue to trickle in, but the schools are medium sized at most. People have reported schools disappearing suddenly and illegal throw netting is being blamed. Papio are hitting the live and fresh dead oama pretty hard now. This may be the peak of the oama bite and papio predation. Updates will follow in the coming weeks.
Update:
Here’s how the past years have gone, correlated with El Nino or La Nina effects. Looks like El Nino years are really good for fishing in HI and we may be due for another El Nino in a yr or two since they cycle around about every 7 yrs.
Breaking News: At the start of the 2nd week of August, the reports are coming in. Oama are showing up in all the usual places and beginning to bite fairly well. It already looks like a better oama year than last year.
Early season papio are being caught with the oama and the papio bite will probably get even better in the weeks to come.
Juvenile mid-depth fish like weke nono / weke ula are showing up, and the kayak guys had a really good day Westside with the kawakawa and small mahi. Lots of annoying kawalea (deep water cudas) and aha (needlefish) are swarming the offshore baits too.
All these seem to signal that the SEASON IS ON!!!
Just when we were gonna call off the Oama Season for 2022, some oama were sighted and caught in the usual places on the South and East sides of Oahu. The beginning of August is when Oama Season officially begins and these guys kept us hanging.
Pamper the early ones so the scouts will tell the bigger schools that it’s safe to make the trek onto the sand.
We’ve been hearing more reports of small schools (less than 300 fish) of oama sighted and beginning to feed fairly well; with papio, some very large, attacking the schools. Normally this occurs by the beginning of August, so the oama schools are really late, but our guess is this is the best it’s gonna be for this year.
Gettum while you can!
Well the 2020 oama season was a bust, as was the nearshore fishing and life in general. Looks like the 2021 oama season hasn’t really started yet, and it’s already the middle of August.
Here’s how the past years have gone:
Sorry for the bleak prediction but it’s looking like a terrible oama season unless they come in late and strong. With NOAA’s announcement of another La Nina winter, that’s unlikely. The silver lining is the halalu piles in the traditional places that are drawing large papio in the early morning hours.
At Hawaii Nearshore Fishing, we feel strongly against “burning spots” that others have worked hard to find and learn. Photos and videos are edited to not reveal landmarks, and we don’t mention specific locations.
Regarding “where da oama stay?”, our recommendation for oama pro and newbie alike is to walk the likely areas on various tides and times of day and see if the early season oama have come in. If you find them before the word gets out, you’ll have them all to yourself for a few days.
Our prediction is that it will be a “recovery year” for bait fish and papio, much better than last year but not as good as the warm El Nino years. There have been more fruits on the trees than last year, and the early papio season has been better than last year’s, supporting the “recovery” theory. Have fun and be safe.
The oama have arrived just in time for traditional August to September period. Matthew describes how the papio bite has spiked accordingly.
Matthew: Summer seems to finally be picking up. What started out as a very bad season may be turning around pretty soon. Oama are coming into several spots and the Papio bite is very hot right now. Oama are in, “young and dumb” which means that they are easier to catch. Perfect papio snack size oama, around 3-4 inches, and also good for oama fries if you prefer to eat Oama. If you find the right pile, many piles right now don’t need palu or super “finessy” gear, they’ll just bite the bait without thinking.
Understandably, with the arrival of the Oama, the Papio have been coming inshore. My friends and I have been getting hot action whipping at different spots, but the one thing they have in common is a lot of moving water with some depth and structure. It’s a good time to go whipping or dunking right now.
Many people are dunking Oama right at some piles I’ve seen, and some decent fish have been pulled up on live Oama. I’ve even caught these roi, taape and menpachi whipping fresh dead oama, and missed some big omilu so far.
Whipping lures around the piles has also been effective. More halalu piles and sardine piles are showing up around the island, but some have been netted.
Oama are starting to trickle in, Papio are biting good, we’re having beautiful days, time to get out there! Just be sure to wear a mask and practice social distancing, for the concern of you and others around you. Stay safe, good luck, and most importantly, have fun. ~ Matt
Mark had shared his simple yet effective system for keeping oama alive, and is back visiting his family’s home on the upper east side of Kauai. He was surprised to find so much oama this late in the year and the omilu were still biting for him.
Mark: I wasn’t able to get over to Kauai during the peak season but have been reading HNF (Hawaii Nearshore Fishing) to keep track of the oama season. Finally got to Kauai and was very surprised to see sizable schools of oama in very shallow water. Been whipping live and dead oama from shore using ultralight gear with maybe 8 – 10 pound test (mono-wish I had some braided) so I was pretty lucky to land the omilu. I was using just a single hook, wish I had some red ones, but tackle seems to be scarce on this side of the island.
The area on the east side I’m whipping is 2 to 5 feet but pretty choppy. Bite has been at low/incoming tide in the morning. It’s been wild. One or more omilu each day I’ve fished, and I just kept this one to eat.
The oama have been so thick I was catching them between casts. The best catch was on a fat live oama I snagged right off the reef. I have to give HNF credit. I have switched up my technique this trip adjusting to some of your stories. Really enjoy all the posts when I can’t be on the island.
Mark
Don’t put away your papio gear yet! There’s still lots of catchable oama and the larger papio are still hunting them.
Elias, who had shared his unbelievable 34lb shibi land based catch of a lifetime, was fishing the West Side from the rocks, throwing into rough water estimated at about 15ft deep. He was popping a bubble with trailing Automatic Fly he won in drawing 2 years ago. when he hooked into a screamer.
The beautiful omilu went 5.2 lbs on his digital scale and had recently gorged on oama. You can see the Automatic Fly on the fish below the spinning reel. Looks like the electric blue of an omilu yeah?
I’ve never seen more than 1 oama in the stomach of a fish, and Elias’ fish had 3, so that omilu must’ve been one heck of a hunter.
So get out and fish the uncrowded beaches while the fish are still within reach!
Haven’t been getting oama reports lately and haven’t seen guys fishing the popular spots so when my friend David said he was gonna be doing some late season oama fishing, that was enough motivation to get me to check the grounds.
David had the school to himself when I arrived and the oama were 5 to 5.5″ fish with that light green color that indicated that they’d be sticking in the shallows for a while. The school size was larger than we could see from where we stood, and David had no problem getting them to eat his variety of baits. If Tina is the Oama Psychologist, David is the Oama Technologist. He loves to tweak his equipment, baits and technique to improve his catch ratio and level of enjoyment. Here’s David landing an oama with the DIY snag-free net he wrote about earlier.
I didn’t see any predators around the oama pile so I whipped the deeper water, covering a lot of ground with the Shimano Shallow Assassin with “Flash Boost” (4 inches long), but nothing was interested. I returned to shore to find the tide was a little too low on the flats and the 1 ft deep water was lined with broken pieces of limu. But there were very small iao jumping once in a while so something was hunting them. The trick was to cast lightly and hold the rod tip up so the Shallow Assassin would stay on the surface and not latch onto any limu.
15 ft in front of me the water erupted and I was tight to a fish that was taking some drag! I could see it’s silhouette because the water was so shallow, and thought it might be an oio. After a few short dashes I got a better view and realized it was a kaku putting up a spirited fight in very shallow water.
I didn’t measure it but was bigger than the small kaku I normally catch in that spot. Looks like it tried to bite the tail off the lure and it was a little tricky to extricate 2 of the 3 barbs of the treble hook to release the fish.
I walked the shoreline, casting into a foot or two of water and eventually got tired of taking limu off the hook. Put on my trusty Shimano Waxwing Baby (2.7 inches long) with rear double hook that ran snag-free and made about 50 casts before the water erupted in an “S” pattern. This was a bigger kaku and I felt it hit the lure but miss the hook. That’s the problem with the upturned double hook. It doesn’t snag limu but also doesn’t hook fish well that hit it from the side.
That ended my slow evening of whipping very shallow water with small swimming lures. Dusk arrived and David had close to a limit of oama in his fanny pack cooler to be served fried crispy for friends later. No one else joined him at the oama school that evening.
It’s the first week of September and the oama are still around in some spots but the fishers and predators seem to have gotten their fill of them and moved on. Guys are still catching papio but further out in deeper water.
Most of the halalu spots have dried up, though there’s still big schools at a few places, and those halalu are being fished hard!
The Shimano Shallow Assassin has never bolo’d. I think it’s the combination of being such a small lure that casts well and swims enticingly. Every time I’ve restocked it in the store it sold out within 2 days. But I’ll be bringing in some other really popular, hard to find JDM lures soon, so please give them a try too!
SUP fishing had been slow for Holoholo writer Kelly the last few months but suddenly turned on in a big way! Seems like the normally hard-to-catch omilu are biting with abandon now.
Kelly: Oama sighting reports have come in from all over Oahu, but I dunno where oama stay for sure. Wish I had some livies for bait. Please run your tubs again Scott!
I did find a small pile of the baby goats last week on the Eastside and got
about 15-20 but my kids ate them … haha. Found a few pretty decent looking oama and a couple sardines in the freezer from months ago so I decided to go SUP fishing on a small high tide dawn patrol.
LOTS of ACTION, but nothing especially noteworthy. Couple omilus, a few
roi, taape and a cuda. No big strikes but was fun to get in the water and
exercise. Always nice to bring home some kau kau too.
The VMC 4X treble hook used as the trailing hook on the frozen oama did the job again. ALL the fish were caught on the rear treble. I’ve never had it open up, even on big fish.
Editor’s Note: Kelly was using the VMC 4X Size #8 treble as his rear hook. That size is very small but still strong. The next two sizes up, suitable for replacing hooks on lures, or used as a larger trailing hook on bait, are being sold in the store.
Stomach content notes: roi and taape all had eggs. They must be spawning. Felt good to clean the reef of invasives. Papio had a belly full of cooked shrimp. Maybe someone threw their scampi appetizer in the water?
It’s the first week of August and like clock work the oama are filling in around the island and omilu are coming into the shallows to grind ’em. Omilu are even being caught on frozen shrimp now, in places that weren’t biting a week ago.
White papio are schooling up to feed and spawn, and kaku are hanging around the sardine schools, falling for lures that resemble the baitfish.
Halalu have been in for a few weeks and are drawing bigger predators.
We suspect this isn’t gonna be a long season, so get out and get yours now!
Last year we went out on a limb and published our first Oama Season Prediction. Our Oama Prognosticator Kelly said: oama would be catchable by the end of July. Papio, mainly omilu, should start raiding the oama piles by the middle/late August.
That turned out to be accurate, the season ended in the fall, and wasn’t as good as the recent El Nino years. This year seems to be running similar to last year. Very small oama are in a few spots and are being caught, but not in big numbers. What’s different than normal years is that the Windward Side already has oama; traditionally the South Side gets oama a few weeks before the oama move up into the Windward side. It seems that oama season started all over, all at once. Using this year’s brief mango season as an indicator, Kelly predicts that some spots will have a lot of oama for a short period of time, but the season won’t be especially long or good. If that’s true, you better get ’em while the getting is good! Omilu are beginning to be caught on the early oama.
Here’s how the past years have gone:
I met David last year on a day that the oama didn’t want to bite the usual cut shrimp bait, and my experimental bait was doing the trick. Here’s how that day went down (I refer to him as “the grandpa” since he was fishing with his grandson). We ran into each other again, and David turned me on to his secret baits and methods. Since then we’ve tried to help each other get better as oama catchers and papio fishermen. Another great friendship, like that with Tina the Oama Psychologist, forged on the oama grounds.
David generously shares a key improvement to a critical piece of oama equipment:
Most real fishermen have forgotten more than I could ever hope to know. But I do have one tip that could help Oama fishermen. The net…. Getting your hook stuck in a fabric net is the pitttttts and of course it always happens when the bite is “on”, especially if you don’t pinch down the barb. So some people line the net with a plastic bag, but when the net is in the water, the bag floats up and out of the net plus it makes an irritating noise when the captured Oama are thrashing around in the plastic.
My solution, is to line the net with shade screen. They sell it at City Mill. It’s that dark green stuff that covers flower hothouses. You can either pull off the red or blue netting from the ready-made nets and discard it, or just stick the shade screen into the net and use a needle and thread (or thin cord or wire will do), to secure the shade screen into the wire hoop of the net; or use plastic ties. I happen to have large needles for sewing leather or carpet, and use leftover braided line to secure the cloth; you can easily make a large needle by using some stainless steel wire and crimping the thread at one end, the same way you would make a needle to bridal live bait. The fish hook doesn’t penetrate or stick on the shade screen because it is a plastic woven fabric and it severely reduces frustration levels. I’ve made shade screen nets out of old squash and racquetball rackets also. I hang them around my neck with bungee cord. Shade screen nets are stiffer and hold their shape and you can fabricate them so that they are shallower than mosquito fish nets that are too deep.
After all, the purpose of the net is just to secure the fish before it throws the hook and wiggles out of your hand, so a deep net is not necessary. Most of my shade cloth nets are only a few inches deep, kind of the shape of a small wok, just enough to keep the critters from wiggling away. The fabric is very cheap.
Aloha.
David
I met Tina a few years ago when I was a struggling oama fisher. I was doing so badly, Tina started putting her oama in my bait bucket! Since that embarrassing outing, I had seen her over the years at the spots, usually out fishing the guys. Her *secret* isn’t a bait, instead she studies the behavior of the oama to determine how to get them to eat that particular day. Here’s a brief set of tips, with more to come in the next installment of the Oama Psychologist.
Tina: One of the things I enjoy most on the weekends or after work is to go oama fishing. I know it is a bit early for the oama to start running, but I was getting excited. So a few weeks ago, I went to check to see if the oama had came in. Walked around and around and around and found nothing at multiple spots.
Went to check it out again this past week. The first spot I checked out, I searched all around and there was not one oama to be seen. Went to the second spot and found a small school of maybe 50 oama swimming around with the tiniest oama- maybe about 4-5 inches long and really skinny. The fish were not really eating a lot and were a little skittish. There were some other people fishing with me that caught one or two fish, and then gave up and went home a little bit after I got there. Some other people came to fish after that, and I noticed they were using large pieces of bait, and were not catching anything. I started making my baits really tiny since the fish were super tiny, and started to catch a few. Caught just enough to eat for pupus, and then went home.
So here’s some general oama tips for all you oama enthusiasts, that I have gathered over the years: