Dead or alive, all the oamas got whacked!

double hook trolling setup

The surf wasn’t as large as forecast so I went back to the spot I fished last week to see if I could find a bruiser papio amongst the barely legal ones.  5 oamas that I was medicating for ich died this morning so I took them along since they shouldn’t be consumed.  With the 5 live ones, that made an even 10, much more than I normally take.

I paddled out to the start of the surf break and within a couple minutes I had a strike on a live oama that ended up cutting off the back hook.  Dang kaku!  Instead of wasting another live one I put out a fresh dead one and gave it 10 minutes to produce.  Since I hadn’t caught anything on dead oama this year I wasn’t expecting much and checked my watch as I paddled around.  4 minutes later a 15 inch lai (leatherback jack) was hooked on the back hook.  Not the big papio I was looking for but I was pleased that the dead bait worked. I put out another dead bait and 3 minutes later an undersized papio was hooked on the back hook.  Still not the big papio I wanted so I put a live oama on and paddled parallel to the break.  I checked the time and within 5 minutes a very small papio pulled the oama off the two hooks.  Ugh… down to 3 live ones left I put another dead one on and this time a papio about the same size as the oama was hooked on the back hook!

And so it went, whether dead or alive, all the strikes occurred within 5 minutes of the bait hitting the water.  All hit the back hook and a few keeper papio swallowed the hook deep where I had to use longnose pliers to pull it out of their gills. I’m using a pretty large Owner Ebi Baitholder hook as the back hook in the hopes that the long shank would prevent the kaku from biting through the line (please see pic).  Yet the bigger fish are taking the hook deep as they inhale the oama tail first.  That hook is almost too big to use on the tail of the oama and it definitely impedes the oama’s swimming ability.

Maybe I should try a circle hook and risk lowering my hookup ratio?

While all the dead oama got hit, the larger papio hit the live ones.  I decided I’ve kept enough barely legal papios for now so all the fish were released.