My uku sensei, Darren, had requested live oama for a half day trolling trip with his son Koby and daughter Keely. Oama catching for me is never a sure thing but the oama finally bit well, so well in fact that 12 died on the trip home due to the bucket being over crowded.  Here’s how that oama outing went.  I gave Darren 18 livies and the 12 that died, saving some livies for Kelly to use on his SUP.

Darren and his kids started on the Windward side at about 8am as the tide was already falling. Within 5 mins they got a double strike on the livies. Koby grabbed the first rod and landed a scrappy omilu.  His younger sister, Keely, was taking a lot longer to bring her fish in but was vindicated when they saw what it was.  Big yellowspot papio!

This dark colored omilu ate both hooks and was released because it was too beautiful to kill.

The next hour, the live oama bite was red hot, with more double strikes and two big fish that broke off on the reef.  When they were out of live oama, they switched to the fresh frozen but the bite was quite a bit slower.  Maybe time of day and a slacker tide contributed to that, but Darren believes that the papio were picking up on the vibrations live oama give off.  Darren guys ended up with 10 omilu, releasing 6, and also kept the big yellowspot.

Whew, I didn’t know if I could catch/deliver live oama, and if they’d stay alive in the 5 gallon bucket until they got used. Darren took the bucket with the yellow lid on the boat (see the pics above) and the 2-D cell battery powered aerator ran the whole time they were fishing. 15 hrs from when I first turned it on at home. I assume he made a few water changes to cool off the fish but still, that’s amazing that the 5 gallon bucket live well worked so well.