Hunting oio on the evening zero foot tide

The oio weren’t tailing in the shallow reef mounds the last two times out so I tried another spot this evening.  This beach has a flatter terrain with a few sandy channels inside of the break.  Light Kona winds made for a voggy, glassy surface.  The 5 inch omilus were pestering my cut bait on the invasive ogo patches so I cast into a small sand break between the mounds and dragged the weighted bait back.

I felt some light pecking unlike the rapid jerks the omilus make, and something squirted off with a few yards of line.  Then the fish realized it was hooked and took off on a smooth 75 yd run.  Ahh, finally an oio after so many trips.  I had been worried my medium casting rod and level wind reel setup might not be able to handle a big fish since the little omilus put a bend in the tip, but the G Loomis Greenwater rod’s backbone kicked in, and the Shimano Calcutta 200 TE (eBay!) smoothly released the 12 lb fluorocarbon.  Resting the rod butt on my holiday-built belly, I took in line when the oio stopped running, and let it take line when it wanted to.  The fish let itself be pulled to within 5 yds of me, and then it took off on a 50 yd run.  There weren’t any sharp rock piles to get cut off on so I enjoyed the short battle.

In a few minutes I had it close and it was bigger than expected despite coming in rather quickly.  I didn’t know of anyone who’d be ready to scrape an oio and make fishcake / lomi oio so I took some clumsy photos and released it.  It’s hard to tell how large it was from this picture, but the fish was almost 20 inches (head to fork).  I’d guess it was close to 4 lbs because it was fairly thick.

Knowing the oio were around, I put on the top half of a mantis shrimp.  I had cut the shrimp in half, lengthwise, because I didn’t want to risk getting stabbed by a lively shrimp.  I cast further out into the same channel and despite the previous commotion, I felt something trying to kill the mantis shrimp piece.  Expecting the line to peel out again, instead the line pulled in spurts and a medium sized obake weke came up.

I went back to cut bait and finished the day with more of the pesky 5 inch omilus.

All the fish were released unharmed.