Hunting the schooling white papio

August 12, 2019 By Scott 3 Comments

Seasonally the white papio, some ulua-sized, school up in the bay for a month or so, and for the last couple of years Frank and I tried to crash their their feeding frenzy party on our paddle watercraft. Each year we couldn’t find them, or they just didn’t want to bite.

We have caught small ones (less than a pound) just as the sun was going down, but never got the bigger ones to bite in the morning. Our boating friend Erik located a big school a few weeks ago, and that was the intel we went on.

Frank and I were on our smaller watercraft since we weren’t going past the breakers. He was on his SUP converted into a sit down kayak style board and I was on my old Scupper Pro kayak. I still had use of my Garmin Echomap fish finder and could see scattered bait and what looked like larger fish spread out in as shallow as 8ft. I dragged sinking swimmers and lead headed jigs through the schools for nada. Frank trolled through them with frozen oama and stopped off a reef edge to throw a popper. As soon as the popper hit the water he was on! The aggressive white taped out at about 11.75 inches. Way to find the biting fish Frank! But the action shut down since it was getting close to 9am.

I slurped the same popper Frank had luck with, over large fish marks but couldn’t get them to wake up. Finally I foul hooked a baby omilu with that popper, on the reef. Almost 2 hrs from Frank’s first fish, in the same general area, he got a surface explosion on his popper I could hear 40 yds away! This was a bigger fish, and went almost 14 inches.

That was all the action we got on poppers. Frank wisely dragged his frozen oama around and released a small omilu and got another white to match his first one. Good thing I have a fishing partner that can catch fish when the fishing gets tough. Without his whites I would have assumed those big blobs on the fish finder’s screen were turtles or something!

So we know the whites were there, it just was too late in the day to get them to frenzy. We’ll start earlier next time!

Top water action and inaction on East and South side

October 6, 2016 By Scott 1 Comment

On a day when the wind was blowing 10 – 15 mph, Erik fished his top water lures on the East side and I stuck to the South side. Erik pointed his aluminum skiff to the deeper water and I started board fishing at the break.

Nothing was showing for Erik as he trolled the outside so he worked his way back in. He didn’t get any boils on his trusty popper but his fishy sense was going off. He changed to the translucent pencil lure from our previous top water outing to practice retrieving it. Suddenly the lure got sucked down and his light action rod bent over. After a spirited tousle, he landed a foul hooked omilu. It had taken the front hook in the corner of its mouth and the rear hook snagged its chin. No wonder it felt much larger than the 11.5 inches (FL) he measured before tagging and releasing.

He moved to a nearby spot and a pack of omilu rushed his lure. As he brought in another foul hooked fish, 2 others tried to rip the lure away. This one was 12 inches and he tagged and released it back to its buddies. I was impressed when I heard how he was able to fool the omilu which often rush top water lures only to swirl and swim away unhooked. I have yet to catch an omilu on a top water lure.

Erik had another omilu shake off, then missed something very large that threw a lot of water. He finished the day at the edge of the murky water with an 7 to 8lb kaku zig zagging behind his lure and kicking up spray but not slicing into his plastic bait.

Meanwhile, nothing showed interest in my new narrow faced top water lure that replaced the raccoon faced lure lost to a kaku the other day. I board fished a channel break that had been previously productive when I used frozen oama. The wind chopped up the water so I paddled in to fish from shore. Bait was missing from the usual spots and I didn’t get any boils as I walked the shoreline. Then I saw small baitfish erupting out of the water and falling back like heavy rain drops. My first cast near the eruption yielded a very small kaku, maybe 12 inches, too small to tag. Nothing hit my next few casts so I changed to a few other top water lures I wanted to test, and even tried a Waxwing Baby. Nothing. I switched back to the new raccoon faced lure and had two boils as the sun set. Later, when I washed down the lure I realized the last two fish had actually scratched up the lure but missed the hooks.

I think the narrow profile of this lure looked enough like the baitfish to draw strikes, whereas the other lures I tried were fuller bodied.

And I think Erik has mastered the chubby pencil lure and we need to get video of that monster kaku attacking his lure.

White papio caught whipping dead oama

October 8, 2015 By Scott 6 Comments

The wind was much lighter than yesterday so I tried the spot I waded out and whipped last week. The waves were small enough where I could sit just inside of the white wash, or in a small channel and cast into the surf. It took a bit of paddling around to find the biters, but once I found them, there were others nearby.

The first papio was a skinny, just legal omilu which I released. The next was a white papio of about the same length but thicker and more muscular. Unlike the omilu, it kept fighting even when I had it board side. The next papio was about 10.5″, head to fork and I considered keeping it but as I readied my fish bag it came off the hook. Oh well, I was just thinking of taking it since the fish seemed to all be the same size.

I cast out a rock hard, frozen oama and the fourth papio took it head first. It was just legal but hooked deep and I didn’t risk killing it by yanking out the hook with pliers so I cut the line off in front of the hook. Hopefully the hook rusts out or falls out soon.

With so many barely legal fish, I paddled around looking for a deeper spot to safely fish. I dug around for a larger oama that still had its colors, and tossed it out. Bam, a much stronger fish hit. The white papio kept fighting even when I had it next to the board. Omilu seem to pull faster and whites pull more doggedly. I happily bagged it.

With a nice white in the bag I went exploring and fished some unproductive water. Then I discovered an area next to the impact zone where the swell rolled through without breaking. I situated myself near the edge of the impact zone and cast another frozen oamasickle. Hookup, and the fish pulled me towards the waves. Yikes! I put the rod in the rod holder and paddled towards calm water hoping the fish wouldn’t rock me. When I reached calm water, I sat up and started cranking. The white, which was initially taking drag, wasn’t nearly as large as I thought. Man these whites can pull hard.

Pretty good action for a spot I’ve never board fished before. I headed in to keep the papios in good condition. Didn’t lose any rigs this time unlike the snaggapalooza yesterday.

Interesting that, although the larger fish below is just an inch longer than the smaller one, its body is deeper and more angular to make room for its sex organs. It fought considerably harder also.