Guest Post: JDM Top water action on the shallow reef shelf

This guest post is from Thad, our resident JDM fishing equipment purveyor and top water expert. He also wrote this very popular halalu fly tying article.  Because I haven’t caught a decent fish since February, Thad was kind enough to share how he did on his last outing.

Fishing has always been more than just a casual hobby for me.  I do it not just for the excitement of hooking and landing the big one, but to get out and enjoy being with Mother Nature.  It’s a relaxing Zen sort of thing which I’m sure many of you can relate to.  Even if I don’t catch anything, I fully enjoy the experience of just being out there near the ocean.  I’ve been fishing since I was in grade school so even though I could fish favorite spots that can produce fish consistently, I love exploring and testing new grounds that I’ve never fished before – regardless of what other have told me about them.

Recently, I’ve been exploring a spot that I had always wondered about and stared at on Google Maps satellite view.  The first two weekends at the new spot had been decent, producing some exciting kaku hits on JDM topwater and shallow swimming subsurface lures.  I was also able to try some flies someone had tied and given to me.  I whipped them with a clear bubble and landed a bunch of catch & release sized omilu, as well as a nice 14” yellow spot papio.

Despite two consecutive trips there, a few unexplored areas remained where I wanted to try using different lures and methods, so I went a third time. Unfortunately, the early morning conditions on that day were not as ideal as the previous two weekends.  The tide was a little higher, the wind was very gusty, and there was also a swell rolling in.  All this movement made the water murky and difficult to see where I was stepping.  I spent the first couple of hours wading near the break, not getting any action, and being bashed around by an occasional set, so I decided to try tagging a kaku in the shallows near the shoreline before I headed home.

The gusty winds were blowing off-shore in a diagonal direction so I could get decent distance throwing my 14gram JDM top water lure downwind.  I’ve had great success fishing this walk-the-dog lure for kaku and papio before.  Its slender shape allows for long, missile-like casts, often out distancing lures that weigh several grams more.  I decided to go with this lure since the water I would be fishing was very thin at about 1 to 1.5 feet deep. The very first cast got out a good distance but I quickly realized the choppy surface and pull of the wind on my line made it difficult to walk the lure like I normally do. A harder than normal twitch of the rod tip was required to get it to glide from side to side but this in turn gave it a bigger, more attractive splash on each turn.  I gave it more time to glide between twitches so the retrieve was very slow paced but looked very good from my vantage point.

With the confidence gained working the first cast, I let the second one sail out with the wind and then began my retrieve.  After a few slow but deliberate twitches, something hit the lure violently with a big splash and bend my rod over.  Fish on!  Unlike all the previous kaku I had hooked there, this fish felt considerably stronger and took line in nice long spurts.  I thought to myself, this must be one of those monster kaku my nephew Reef hooked here and had told me about.  I hoped my 25lb fluorocarbon leader was nowhere near its razor sharp teeth. The fish headed sideways towards the left which was different from the way other kaku have fought. There was no signature head shake of a papio and the water was very shallow so I began thinking maybe I hooked an oio instead.  Excited by this thought, I carefully fought the fish closer and within sight. Papio!!!

 

 

 

 

 

Now, I’ve caught papio in very shallow waters before and know they do come in close to hunt the reef flats but I was surprised since this was a decent sized one and I didn’t feel any of the telltale head shakes of a papio.  I immediately could see why as the fish was foul hooked with the tail treble hooked to the bottom of a gill plate and the front treble hooked in the belly. I fumbled around trying to grab my wading net but found it was tangled with my fish bag and rod holster I keep on my waist.  The hooks looked secure on the fish so I decided to walk it over a nearby sand beach.  The fish measured 20 inches to the fork of the tail and would later weigh 5 pounds 0.5 ounces on my kitchen scale.

 

 

 

 

 

With a nice fish in the bag, it was time to head home.  I had walked a long distance down the beach from where I was parked, so I whipped my lure as I worked my way back.  A few yards from where I hooked the papio, another topwater blowup led to a 22 inch kaku which I released with PIFG tag #A5343 securely attached to its back.  I noticed several small, broken schools of very early season oama. They were very skittish and wouldn’t allow me to get close but they were definitely oama.  Maybe they were drawing the predators on to the shallow flats?  Hmm.  Has the 2018 season begun?  I hope so.