Late Spring / Early summer is the best time to catch pelagics on live opelu. Problem is catching opelu during this time is really hard because the opelu know the pelagics are hunting them. Best shot at the opelu is at the crack of dawn before the pelagics are on them but I’m not even driving to the launch at that time. Still, I was hoping to catch some hungry, stray opelu and drag them around in the deep.
I decided on the Windward side because the winds were lighter than the South side, and hit the water at 8:40am, 3 hrs after sun rise. Bait was scattered and sure enough they didn’t want to eat my damashi. In fact, the only thing falling for it were the deep water lizardfish. No nabeta, no opakapaka. The conditions were so nice that I decided just to run the Bixpy motor on the lowest speed and drag the damashi out to 300ft just to see what kinds of marks would show up on the fish finder. At 200ft something latched onto my damashi hooks and I was completely astounded to see two small, yet perfectly sized opelu come up. It was after 10am! I put one on my live bait rig and tried to keep the other alive in a juice bottle, head first, changing its water every so often.
I tried catching more opelu but failed so I went out to 300ft (a whopping 3 miles from land) and turned around and let the current push me in while I tried to hook something else with the damashi. Sure enough, with my damashi on the bottom in 280 ft, the opelu was taken and the line was going out fast. It probably took more than a minute to bring in my damashi, so the fish had run out a lot of line. I was really hoping that it was my first shibi (small yellowfin tuna) and it had some frantic head shakes, but when it came up I saw silver and sadly thought it was a kahala. Instead it was a tired kawakawa because I had fought it with so much line out, so when I bled it over the side it actually died a few mins later and the blood stopped flowing.
I had drifted in and was at about 250ft when I dropped the second, now dead, opelu down. It got slammed near the bottom and this fight was a strong up and down battle. I put the Avet SX Raptor in low gear and grinded it up. Because the fight was so short, the kawakawa came up green and took longer to get in position to kage. It stayed alive while being bled over the side, and after 5 mins I got tired of leaving a bloody trail for sharks to follow so I bagged in my my Large Hobie kill bag. There wasn’t room for another big fish so I headed into the shallow drop off to check on the reef fish.
The last time we fished the drop off was in April and the water was a chilly 74 degrees. This time it was 77 degrees and the damashi got hit on every drop until the hooks and lead were broken off. Misc reef fish (lai, moana, hawk fish, etc) were released. Looks like this year’s inshore season is about to go off.
I feel so blessed (and lucky) to have stumbled upon the two opelu the way I did, and be able to put them in front of kawakawa. The kawakawa, being big, bloody fish required a lot more special handling than a 5lb uku. I had to stop to buy ice on the way home to supplement the Arctic Ice in my fish bag, and had to cut all the darker, bloody meat away from the filets to maximize taste and shelf life.
But the recipients of the fish ate ’em within hours of receiving it and said was similar but tastier than yellowfin tuna and less *fishy/bloody* than aku. That was a testament to the instructions Kelly provided (bleed well, ice well, clean all the guts and dark meat out right away, wrap in paper towel and change the towel when it gets bloody).
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