The winds continued to be very light, and the North swell took a break so I went to one of my favorite Eastside spots to compare conditions with the Southside. I had never fished this area in January, and was expecting the water to be cold. Instead the water was sheet glass calm and a degree warmer, 75.5, than it was last week on the Southside.
It took 45 mins to get out to the first spot, with the Bixpy motor doing the heavy lifting. I had forgotten that the Eastside comparable depth was a mile further than the Southside. First drop in search of opelu and a small-medium nabeta came up! I hadn’t found these all of last year, and was very pleasantly surprised. Caught 2 more to make a meal of them but snagged structure twice and had to retie. Left the area to get away from snags and didn’t find any bait. The damashi continued to get bit and occasionally bit off on every drop. If this were the Southside on a sheet glass day I’d have to use bait on the damashi, but the fish were happy eating CHL Minnows.
I was really enjoying seeing what would come up next until realizing I had spent 2 hours playing on the reef without a hard tug, so I put out a frozen opelu and headed out to 225ft. Nothing showed up on the sonar and nothing hit the opelu. So different from the summer when deep opelu schools were hanging out near the bottom and kawakawa were taking dead bait.
Drifted back in, had the opelu pulled off at the shallow drop so I put on a live long nabeta looking wrasse and it was just pecked at. Dropped down a live 9 inch lizardfish next without better luck. Put down another frozen opelu and it got pulled off. Seemed like the small bait stealers were pretty brazen because they knew the big predators weren’t around but definitely preferred opelu to reef fish you and I wouldn’t eat.
A bunch of weke nono and a baby uku came up on the damashi, but too small to keep and it was past time to head in. Can’t believe I was playing in the calm water for almost 5 hrs. Then my bait rod finally hooked up but the fish ran into a cave. I’m telling myself it was a roi so I won’t be as bummed. I broke the line off and heard sea birds laughing behind me. I turned around and couldn’t believe my eyes. Fish were crashing on the surface and birds were dive bombing the bait that was chased up. I didn’t have hooks on my bait rig but wanted to get a closer look so I motored/paddled over but the melee ended and the birds sat on the water waiting for the bait school to be chased up again. Unfortunately the action didn’t show up well on the video I took.
Well, the frenzy never reappeared so I headed in with just 3 yellow nabeta in my fish bag after 6 hrs of hard fishing., I learned that the small fish still bite even though the water is super clear but the predators may not feed on calm days after a big moon. It’s definitely worth going back in the Winter until the damashi bite slows down.
My neighbor masterfully deep fried the nabeta by first seasoning in salt and pepper, then coating with corn starch. He scored the fish to allow the oil to cook the bones to crunchy perfection.
When in doubt, fry longer to make sure the bones are cooked through and the flesh is no longer mushy.
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