Kelly joined me on the Windward sea monster hunt today. He was on his SUP, using his shorts as a rod holder, and I was on my heavily loaded kayak.  Kelly landed a 12″ omilu right off the bat whipping a live tub-raised oama, then the action really slowed for us.  There wasn’t much life at the drop off so we paddled out to the  fringing reef but I bailed when I saw small surf coming in.  I overshot our landing spot coming back in and had to paddle upwind for half an hr.  3 hrs elapsed during this round trip and we were beat.

We still had some live oama left so despite being tired and hungry, we decided to use ’em up near the drop off.  At the inner reef channel edge, Kelly chummed pieces of frozen oama and soon enough a 2lb omilu picked through the chum line.  Kelly fly lined a live oama on the bottom of the channel and something big picked it up and slowly swam off with it, settled to the bottom for awhile, then pulled hard in spurts.  As Kelly tried to slow down the sea monster, the line parted above the long leader.  Was it the same sea monster I hooked a few days ago?  My sea monster was hooked about 40 yds away from the drop off and behaved differently.

Down to my last live oama, and with no bites to speak of all day, I decided to fly line it since that technique worked well for Kelly.  I slow trolled, hugging the drop off edge, and just as I was rounding the corner to come in I got a hit that screamed the ratchet and pulled the rod down on the rod holder, into my shoulder.  I instinctively picked up the rod and started cranking but the wind blew me onto the reef.  I felt the sickening rub of the reef and threw the rod back in the rod holder and paddled into deep water.  When I picked up the rod again, I could feel the line running through a rock pile at the bottom of the channel. Ugh… I tried to free the line but it popped seconds later.  This fish wasn’t the sea monster. It felt like a big, 5 lb plus omilu that was smart enough to cut me off instantly.  I should’ve paddled for the deep water when the fish hit instead of fighting it above the reef.

We’ll be back, properly loaded for bear. Or sea monsters.