Finally… light wind, caught an opelu… but missed the fish!

5 weeks of wind and rain, very unusual for winter, finally let up this past week. Frank and I dusted off our kayaks and out of shape bodies, and paddled out in greasy calm conditions.

Water clarity improved at about 80ft so I dropped the GoPro down a few times before breaking out the damashi. I didn’t see the video until I got home. There weren’t as many surprise fish as the last time I did this, but there were a few mystery fish near the bottom swimming slightly out of range of the camera. Based on what we had caught there before, I have an opinion of what it was. What do you guys think it was?

There were a lot of small fish marks on the fish finder without larger marks under them, so it looked like those reef fish weren’t worried about being eaten by something bigger. The tide was dropping to a very small high tide later, so it seemed that the big fish hadn’t come in to feed.

At 90 ft the water was really clear and I palu’d some opelu pieces to see if I could bring in the opelu. The black hage swarmed the palu, and the opelu kala came into view. Then we could see silvery, elongated fish beneath the opelu kala.

A tight bait ball was passing under me just as I was bringing my damashi up, and I could see the two intersect on my fish finder. I hooked something in 40ft down that couldn’t be the usual moana or lizardfish, and the frantic tail beats gave me hope. My first opelu caught intentionally, and the 9 inch fish was bigger than I wanted for the small uku I was targeting. All the on-the-water instruction from my Opelu Sensei Robert helped me recognize the opelu bait ball halfway off the bottom and I had to go right through the bait ball to finally catch an opelu.

I put the fish in my kayak foot well because there was a little water flushing through the scupper hole. Frank and I tried to catch more opelu but failed. The opelu was splashing around but seemed fine when I hooked it in the nostrils and lightly through the back. We heard boat chatter on the VHF radio of nearby boats initially struggling and eventually getting an ono and a mahi so we were pumped to go deep.

Frank trolled a weighted store bought fresh opelu and I trolled my livey with a 2.25 oz bullet weight out past 300ft (deep) with no bites. Frank dropped his down to the bottom and instantly got hooked up with something that pulled much harder and faster than anything he had hooked before, and eventually popped his mainline. These ulua are hard to stop on our light-medium tackle!

I trolled the livey back to 110ft and dropped it down for uku. Just before the opelu reached the bottom it started jerking on the line like it was trying to get away from something. I held the rod with the clicker on and light drag set, and line pulled off the reel fast for a few seconds and stopped. The predator had run with the 9 inch opelu and yanked it off without getting hooked. Shucks! Next time I need to fish the live bait completely out of gear with just the clicker on, and let the predator run, stop, turn and eat the big bait.

Another fish pulled line when it took an 8 inch fresh opelu and missed the hooks also. Seemed like the few uku around were too small to easily swallow the bait, or tentatively nibbling on the flat tide conditions. The rest of the baits were mauled by hage so we gave up and went in.

Great day wind-wise to get back into shape but the fishing was slower than we had hoped. But I did learn that using live opelu was much more effective than using fresh dead opelu because the bait stealers didn’t chase down and maul the lively opelu. The fresh dead opelu were mauled within a minute of nearing the bottom.