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.