Holoholo: Oama fail to oama success!

7th grade Matthew continues to get better at the various shore fishing disciplines despite often fishing alone and without experienced fishers to learn from.  With just a few basic oama tips he really improved his oama game. I’ve never oama fished with Matthew so he hasn’t seen how lousy I really am and why I need good bait.

Matthew:
I have always had trouble with oama fishing, so I decided to basically quit. My first few tries resulted in failures. Often I would even find an oama school nobody else was fishing and then fail too. Finally, I got some, but with only 3 in a few hours. I got discouraged by this and I had quit oama fishing for a good 2 years or so. But then I met Scott, the oama master. He had a ton of oama knowledge and he told me I should try again. I thought maybe, but later.

After unstoppable nagging from Scott to try again, I decided to try a popular oama spot for an hour. I used cut fish, and chummed some right before I dropped my splitshot into the water. I hooked one on the first drop, but I was so surprised that I forgot to set the hook! I kept trying and surprisingly, got 12 at the end. By then I was itching to go again, but Hurricane Lane started to plow towards us.

I decided to chance it on Saturday and met up with Hunter at another spot. This was my first time fishing this spot, and I wasn’t really planning to go oama fishing, so I had to use his shrimp. It worked ok at first, landing 4 oama in 10 minutes, but then the bite really slowed, and I wasn’t smart enough to go to the other pile that was biting. I then filleted up a fish and used that for bait, ending up with 12-ish more oama. I, however, was convinced to go back the next day, and I had a different plan, I filleted the bait up and cut it into pieces before the trip and put it in a container. I also made an oama board out of a boogie board, fishing line, duct tape, and an upside down stepping stool. One person there even said “It is the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen, but it works!”.

I went to the same spot the next day, and found a pile that wasn’t biting but had a lot and nobody was fishing it. I remembered something that Scott said and tried to chum the school, almost immediately after the chum hit the water, the sitting oama turned into frenzied oama. I lowered my bait and immediately it got hit. Man, these things fight hard. I kept pulling up oama after oama until the others fishing the non biting pile noticed I was getting bites, so they came over and fished it with me. Still repeating the process, chum, lower bait, catch an oama. I eventually had to leave though, and I left Hunter, Issey, and Cade to finish off strong.

This was my best oama day ever, and I ended up with a massive 45!! Almost my limit! That is amazing for me! For a guy who is used to catching 3 oama per 8 or so hours, catching 45 in 2 hours was a miracle. Much thanks to Scott for turning my Oama luck around! He was right about bait being everything in Oama fishing! I plan to go back to that same spot later and test a new theory soon too.