The winds dropped this past Sunday and Monday (Labor Day) due to Hurricane Miriam blocking the trades. Perfect conditions to see how “live oama” vs “dead oama” vs “no oama” compare.
Kelly’s SUP caught omilu
I wasn’t able to coordinate live oama pickup with Kelly so he SUP fished the south shore reefs on Sunday with frozen oama. He caught four omilu and a kaku trolling 7 frozen oama in 2.5 hrs. He released a small omilu and the kaku.
Also on Sunday, Erik fished the east side throwing plugs from the small boat and didn’t get a single sniff.
Tori and Keely with the results of their short, successful trip
On Monday, Labor Day, Darren trolled live oama in the same general area Erik plugged. His crew was his daughter Keely and her friend Tori, and they trolled live oama for two hours in the morning. They registered double and triple strikes, ending up with 8 omilu landed on 12 live oama, keeping 3.
At the same time, in the same area, Erik’s dad Ed took the tin boat out for some dead oama trolling with his two cousins. In 5 hrs of fishing they caught 10 omilu.
So live oama trolled by boat yielded 4 fish an hr, dead oama trolled by boat yielded 2 fish an hr, dead oama trolled by SUP yielded 1.6 fish an hr (didn’t count the kaku), and plugs didn’t work in the area where the papio were keyed in on oama. Very small test sample and varying number of anglers and lines out but it supports the idea that live oama near the reef will get bit during the oama season, and dead oama will get bit, but just not as quickly as live oama. Throwing lures on the papio looking for oama is a tough sell right now.
Frank and I ended up not kayak fishing because the storm generated waves sounded a little too risky.
Interesting results. This echos what I’ve heard from a lot of fly-fisherman as well as whippers who target papio, that when the bait around, the artificials don’t work as well. One possible explanation I’ve heard is that they may be more fed during these periods, and therefore less aggressive (or maybe they need to hunt less often?)
Kinda-sorta related to this, another interesting theory I’ve heard is the possibility that the most aggressive individuals are constantly being culled from the population, leaving only the warier fish to survive to reproduce. Because the minimum size for take is smaller than the typical size papio reach by sexual maturity (13″), this explanation would seem plausible. I know at least one person who reads this blog that might have some insight and his own opinion on this 🙂
Interesting theories Jason! Do I know the person you’re referring to regarding removing the dumb fish’s dna from the gene pool?
To add to this, young Matthew dunked dead oama near a nehu school that was being attacked by white papio and kaku. Nothing touched the oama but his silver kastmasters got hit. That incident supports the theory that the preds were zero’d in on a certain size and color.
Yes, you know of him ;). I may have mentioned the idea to you guys once before. Interesting that in that second scenario the oama got passed over for the artificial lure. I guess the overriding factor, overriding even the real vs artificial debate, is that you gotta match the hatch. I suspect if he were fishing a lure that mimicked an oama (both in coloration, movement and fished near the bottom) he would not have gotten many hits near the nehu.
“Match the hatch”, a fly fishing adage but true for bait fishing too. I think you’re right Jason.