Live bait: Oama, long live the King!

raising oama

If you google for “oama”, eventually you will come across hits for our current President (this is written in 2014).  But if you fish in HI, you would know that oama are juvenile “weke” or goatfish that arrive in the shallow sandy areas between early July and late September to flee their many predators.  You’ll also know that fishing with oama during this “season” is the best time of the year to fish for papio (jack crevalle).  Some people only fish during this period and pack their gear away the rest of the year.

There is much information on what beaches to find them and how to catch them.  Sometimes the catching is easy, sometimes it’s really hard.  The best way to catch them is to have an experienced person show you how it’s done.

Every oama you catch can potentially be converted into a papio.  While it’s an art to catching the oama, it’s a science to keep them alive long enough to use them for bait. Here’s what I learned the hard way, at the expense of the poor oama.

• Oama are a schooling fish that are comforted by the company of their friends.  It’s ok to keep quite a few of them together.
• It’s not enough to keep them in a bucket of salt water with an aerator going.  Heat and their own ammonia kills them.  Keep them in an aerated, cool place,  and change their water daily.  A large cooler in the shade will do, and to increase their chances of survival you can use an ammonia detoxifying agent like Ammo Lock to neutralize the bad chemicals in their water.  You can buy Ammo Lock in a pet fish store.  Keep their holding pen dark and the oama will be much less stressed.
• A dying oama seems to give off strong toxins that kill the others. Remove dying or dead fish immediately and dose with the Ammo Lock.
• If you have the luxury of a tank with filtration, you can actually keep oama alive for a long time.  Just don’t get too attached to the cuddly, whiskered cuties.  I did and couldn’t put a hook through them so I had to wait for them to die before I used them!
• If you plan to use the oama for bait within a week you don’t have to worry about feeding them but if you really want to you can get some frozen Mysis shrimp from the pet store.  Start with very little because they won’t be feeding well initially.  If they don’t eat the shrimp you’ll have to remove them because it will cloud the water.  Some people use brine shrimp but I haven’t had good luck with that.  Just feed what you can see them completely eat in a minute or so.
• Oama are fairly fragile and most of the initial ones will die.  After administering last rites, if you want to preserve them for future bait you can do the following.  Lay them out, salt their bodies with rock salt, and vacuum seal them in a bag if that’s available.  That’s the best way to freeze them.

I trolled my frozen, salted oamasickles from my surfboard last year and they worked almost as well as live oama.  They did spin as I pulled them through the water so I needed to connect my fluorocarbon leader to my main line with a ball bearing swivel, replacing the standard ball swivel.

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