Hawaii Nearshore Fishing

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It’s official, the Summer fishing season has started!

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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!

2019 Oama Season Prediction

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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:

  • 2014 – Normal start and stayed a little longer than expected. Arrived in late June and was mostly gone by October.  El Nino began late this year and water began to warm up.
  • 2015 – Season started late and ended late. Oama came in late July and stayed at some places past December. El Nino in full effect.
  • 2016 – Season started late and ended late. Oama came in late July and stayed through November. El Nino ended this year and water began to cool.
  • 2017 – Normal start and slightly late ending. Oama came in late June and began to leave in October, at most places. La Nina brought a lot of rain.
  • 2018 – Season started in late July, ended in the fall and wasn’t particularly long or good. La Nina ended before the Summer and could be blamed for the late start.

Holoholo: DIY snag free oama net

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Green nets are covered with shade cloth material, red net is covered with household fiberglass screen.

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.

Another angle of same nets

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

Holoholo: Oama Catch Report by Wahine Oama Psychologist!

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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.

{photo from last year)

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:

  1. If you want to find oama, don’t always rely on other people to find the schools.  Check around at different places, because the early bird gets the worm, and you might find some secret spots that no one knows about!
  2. Catching oama is not the same for every place.  You have to be able to adjust to changing situations.  Some oama like small bait, some like large bait.  Sometimes you have to drop your bait to the bottom, and sometimes halfway or leave it at the top. I even found one place that if the bait gets any type of dirt, sand or rocks on the bait, the oama won’t go for the bait. 
  3. Show aloha to others – I have made many friends out there oama fishing and had lot of good laughs and conversation.  It’s amazing how well you can get to know someone fishing together for an hour or two.  If you show aloha to those around you, they often will teach you the best techniques, or give you advice for gear, line and hooks that work best.

Early June bait report

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NPS photo – Larry Basch

It’s the first week of June, 2019. Traditionally, the iao have blanketed the estuaries, sardines have been in for a while, and halalu have been in for a few weeks. Not this year. Iao have come and gone, sardines are in at some places but not in great numbers, and small numbers of halalu are showing, then thinning out the following day.

Small pods of fresh-from-the-ocean oama have been spotted running scared along the shoreline. It’ll probably be another few weeks before they settle down and start feeding visibly, and another few weeks on top of that before the schools are large enough to target.

So basically, the season hasn’t started yet!

Oama Season Update – 4th week of October

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The two little oama on the bottom just swam in from the deep and still have a bit of their “blue water” color. In contrast, the moose oama are probably gonna leave the safety of the shallows soon.

The oama came in late this year, finally filling in around mid-August.  Few spots still have oama, 2 months after they came in.  What is in abundance are pesky baby papio, hanging out with the mixed sized oama that are left and getting to the baits first.

The past warm years have had lots of baby papio, but never this many, this late in the year.  I blame the late developing El Nino for that.

I tried to get past the papio to reach the oama on the bottom and found the effort to be extremely frustrating.  With that many papio mouths looking for food, I hope the reef’s eco balance isn’t thrown off too much.

The challenges of keeping too many oama alive for too long

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Oama #1 has full blown cloudy eyes. Oama #2 has it in both eyes but its eyes aren’t bulging out yet. Oama #3 is beginning to show in its left eye.

My oama tubs were probably triple the recommended capacity because I had planned to provide bait for a few boat and kayak fishing trips.  The weather didn’t allow us to fish so the oama sat in crowded conditions for a month.  Despite water changes and attempts to improve water quality, oama in all the three tubs began to develop cloudy eyes and lose their coloring.  Once that happened they’d die 2 days later and sometimes poison the tub with the chemicals released at death.

Pulled out before they died in the tub. Besides being a little skinny, they look ok.

As a last ditch effort I put the remaining 10 oama of one tub in an aerated bucket with new water, and planned to use them for bait the next day.  I also took a bucket of healthy oama. Half of the weak oama died on the drive to the beach, whereas the healthy oama in the other bucket were fine.

When weak oama were mixed with healthy fish, the healthy fish didn’t weaken right away so it doesn’t seem like they were dying from a contagious disease, they were just worn out from living in poor water conditions for too long.  Oama that freshly died in the tubs or were euthanized worked well enough trolled, so they weren’t wasted.

Summary for those trying to keep a lot of oama alive:

  • If you’re gonna keep oama in over crowded conditions for an extended period of time, change the water as often as you can.  The poor water quality will eventually weaken them.
  • If they are all in a weakened state, the toxin a dying fish emits will kill others. If the rest are relatively strong, one dying fish won’t kill them instantly but will worsen the water quality.
  • If the fish have cloudy eyes and seem “off color”, they may not be too contagious to the others but will probably die in the next few days. It’s better to remove them before they die in the tub.
  • Often fish start dying at the same time in more than one tub. I used to think I was cross-contaminating the tubs but now I think that the fish just have a certain amount of time they can handle poor water conditions before giving up.

“Live oama” vs “dead oama” vs “no oama” comparison

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The winds dropped this past Sunday and Monday (Labor Day) due to Hurricane Miriam blocking the trades.  Perfect conditions to see how “live oama” vs “dead oama” vs “no oama” compare.

Kelly’s SUP caught omilu

I wasn’t able to coordinate live oama pickup with Kelly so he SUP fished the south shore reefs on Sunday with frozen oama. He caught four omilu and a kaku trolling 7 frozen oama in 2.5 hrs.  He released a small omilu and the kaku.

Also on Sunday, Erik fished the east side throwing plugs from the small boat and didn’t get a single sniff.

 

Tori and Keely with the results of their short, successful trip

On Monday, Labor Day, Darren trolled live oama in the same general area Erik plugged. His crew was his daughter Keely and her friend Tori, and they trolled live oama for two hours in the morning.  They registered double and triple strikes, ending up with 8 omilu landed on 12 live oama, keeping 3.

At the same time, in the same area, Erik’s dad Ed took the tin boat out for some dead oama trolling with his two cousins. In 5 hrs of fishing they caught 10 omilu.

So live oama trolled by boat yielded 4 fish an hr, dead oama trolled by boat yielded 2 fish an hr, dead oama trolled by SUP yielded 1.6 fish an hr (didn’t count the kaku), and plugs didn’t work in the area where the papio were keyed in on oama.  Very small test sample and varying number of anglers and lines out but it supports the idea that live oama near the reef will get bit during the oama season, and dead oama will get bit, but just not as quickly as live oama.  Throwing lures on the papio looking for oama is a tough sell right now.

Frank and I ended up not kayak fishing because the storm generated waves sounded a little too risky.

 

 

Holoholo: Oama fail to oama success!

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7th grade Matthew continues to get better at the various shore fishing disciplines despite often fishing alone and without experienced fishers to learn from.  With just a few basic oama tips he really improved his oama game. I’ve never oama fished with Matthew so he hasn’t seen how lousy I really am and why I need good bait.

Matthew:
I have always had trouble with oama fishing, so I decided to basically quit. My first few tries resulted in failures. Often I would even find an oama school nobody else was fishing and then fail too. Finally, I got some, but with only 3 in a few hours. I got discouraged by this and I had quit oama fishing for a good 2 years or so. But then I met Scott, the oama master. He had a ton of oama knowledge and he told me I should try again. I thought maybe, but later.

After unstoppable nagging from Scott to try again, I decided to try a popular oama spot for an hour. I used cut fish, and chummed some right before I dropped my splitshot into the water. I hooked one on the first drop, but I was so surprised that I forgot to set the hook! I kept trying and surprisingly, got 12 at the end. By then I was itching to go again, but Hurricane Lane started to plow towards us.

I decided to chance it on Saturday and met up with Hunter at another spot. This was my first time fishing this spot, and I wasn’t really planning to go oama fishing, so I had to use his shrimp. It worked ok at first, landing 4 oama in 10 minutes, but then the bite really slowed, and I wasn’t smart enough to go to the other pile that was biting. I then filleted up a fish and used that for bait, ending up with 12-ish more oama. I, however, was convinced to go back the next day, and I had a different plan, I filleted the bait up and cut it into pieces before the trip and put it in a container. I also made an oama board out of a boogie board, fishing line, duct tape, and an upside down stepping stool. One person there even said “It is the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen, but it works!”.

I went to the same spot the next day, and found a pile that wasn’t biting but had a lot and nobody was fishing it. I remembered something that Scott said and tried to chum the school, almost immediately after the chum hit the water, the sitting oama turned into frenzied oama. I lowered my bait and immediately it got hit. Man, these things fight hard. I kept pulling up oama after oama until the others fishing the non biting pile noticed I was getting bites, so they came over and fished it with me. Still repeating the process, chum, lower bait, catch an oama. I eventually had to leave though, and I left Hunter, Issey, and Cade to finish off strong.

This was my best oama day ever, and I ended up with a massive 45!! Almost my limit! That is amazing for me! For a guy who is used to catching 3 oama per 8 or so hours, catching 45 in 2 hours was a miracle. Much thanks to Scott for turning my Oama luck around! He was right about bait being everything in Oama fishing! I plan to go back to that same spot later and test a new theory soon too.

Holoholo: SUP fishing with oama

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My SUP fishing friend Kelly has guest posted in the past and started off the Holoholo section.  He consistently brings home the kau kau fish during the oama season and also during the “off season”.  I shared 9 live oama with him that he used for his Maunalua Bay outing.  He forgot his Flow-Troll bait bucket that day and had to keep a 5 gallon bucket from tipping over on the deck of his SUP!

Kelly:
Hi Scott,
My friends and I have been capitalizing on the late oama run on Oahu and using them outside of shorecasting range to catch papio and some other oddballs. Two weeks ago we went in the Waikiki area and I got a 3-pound omilu and a couple of 2-pounders. Sorry no pics, because went in my opu fast.

Omilu and taape filets

Opihi and lomi awa awa

 

 

 

 

 

 

Raw awa awa fish balls

Fried awa awa fish balls

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Last week we went in Maunalua Bay (thanks for LIVE OAMA!) and I got a 3-pound awa awa, 5 small omilu (1-2 pound, best kine fo’ grine) and two ta`ape. The ta`ape had eggs, so was good to take them off the reef. Ate those fish fast kine, but managed to get pics of the fileted fish, lomi awa awa and cooked patties for you.
K-den,
Kelly

Live oama out fished fresh dead, boat trolled inshore

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My uku sensei, Darren, had requested live oama for a half day trolling trip with his son Koby and daughter Keely. Oama catching for me is never a sure thing but the oama finally bit well, so well in fact that 12 died on the trip home due to the bucket being over crowded.  Here’s how that oama outing went.  I gave Darren 18 livies and the 12 that died, saving some livies for Kelly to use on his SUP.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Darren and his kids started on the Windward side at about 8am as the tide was already falling. Within 5 mins they got a double strike on the livies. Koby grabbed the first rod and landed a scrappy omilu.  His younger sister, Keely, was taking a lot longer to bring her fish in but was vindicated when they saw what it was.  Big yellowspot papio!

This dark colored omilu ate both hooks and was released because it was too beautiful to kill.

The next hour, the live oama bite was red hot, with more double strikes and two big fish that broke off on the reef.  When they were out of live oama, they switched to the fresh frozen but the bite was quite a bit slower.  Maybe time of day and a slacker tide contributed to that, but Darren believes that the papio were picking up on the vibrations live oama give off.  Darren guys ended up with 10 omilu, releasing 6, and also kept the big yellowspot.

Whew, I didn’t know if I could catch/deliver live oama, and if they’d stay alive in the 5 gallon bucket until they got used. Darren took the bucket with the yellow lid on the boat (see the pics above) and the 2-D cell battery powered aerator ran the whole time they were fishing. 15 hrs from when I first turned it on at home. I assume he made a few water changes to cool off the fish but still, that’s amazing that the 5 gallon bucket live well worked so well.

Oama season in full swing – 4th week of August

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A lot of spots reported new, large schools of oama biting well last week.  Papio were seen chasing the piles and more predators will switch off from targeting halalu and focus on the oama.  Maybe these new oama snuck in on the New Moon at the end of second week of August?  Better late than never.

Expect the large surf and local flooding from TS Lane to disturb the oama schools for a while, but they’ll return hungrier than ever.

Sharing live oama with friends

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Darren, who has taken me on his boat to jig the Penguin Banks, and to troll nearshore for papio, was hoping for live oama to troll with his son and daughter.  I only had 5 small oama and 5 moose in my tubs so I told him I’d try to catch some oama but no promises since they weren’t biting that well the last time I went.  I changed the hook on my moose rig to catch 4 inch pinkie oama. The smallest hook I had was a #17, which is big for early season oama but smaller than I like to tie and unhook. I normally use a #14 Owner Mosquito hook to land the moose.

I went to my regular oama spot that hasn’t had much oama yet, and was surprised to see 8 other guys in 2 groups fishing.  That was a good sign, I guess.  Since the guys didn’t invite me into their group, I searched around and found a school of about 50 pinkie oama breezing in 2 ft of water.  I didn’t hear the other guys landing any oama, so I palu’d first and the oama ate a little but didn’t swarm.  Great time to use the super secret bait I stumbled upon the last time out, when I hooked a halalu on it.  I put on a small piece, dropped it down and hooked an oama!  Just to check how well they would bite, I dropped the bare hook down and caught another!!  I could see the group of 4 guys fishing while I fished and they hadn’t landed an oama since I got there.  The guys behind me weren’t saying anything either.  Hmm. I put on another piece of the secret bait and repeated the cycle, catching two oama, first with bait and the second with no bait.  Maybe the breezing pile was biting better than the others?

Eventually all the other oama fishers left but a grandpa and his grandson.  I lost track of my pile and had to fish the outskirts of theirs.  The grandpa welcomed me and said the oama weren’t biting too well for them.  I dropped down, and eventually landed one, then landed another with the bare hook again. At this point half my pinkies were caught on the bare hook, which is easier to do since the bait isn’t in the way of the barb, and most of them were hooked in the mouth, not foul hooked.

I felt bad that the middle school grandson wasn’t catching on their cut shrimp bait, so I offered my super secret bait. I only had a little left and they promised to keep it super secret.  Instantly the grandson was hooking up, and so was the grandpa. Grandpa, who was a seasoned oama guy who had tried all the premium baits, was amazed at how well it worked and started making plans to acquire some himself.  I told him that if I ever hear of people using that bait at that spot I know he leaked it!  He was so grateful he was telling me all his secret fishing spots.  The oama still bit for my semi-secret bait, and since I needed to keep them all alive, I looked in my bait bucket.  Was getting a little full, which is very unusual for me since I use the big #14 hook and not as secret bait.  And I’m kind of a junk oama fisher.

I said goodbye to the happy oama fishers and filled my 5 gallon bucket with 3/4 full ocean water.  On the drive home I could hear them banging the sides of the bucket and when I got home 12 were dead. The one pump wasn’t enough oxygen for all the oama.  That only happens when there are more than 40 in the bucket. I placed the rest in two separate tubs and they all survived.  Rough count, including the 12 that died was about 45 – 48.  50 is the daily limit for oama and I was under that.

Darren used some of the livies on his boat 4 days later, and Kelly used a few on his SUP 5 days later.  Both did way better with livies than dead oama.  Here’s how hot the live oama action was on Darren’s boat.  Here’s how Kelly did with his SUP trolled livies.

It sounds like the oama have finally moved into the normal spots on Oahu and are biting really well.  Get ’em before the big moon slows down the bite.