North swell died down a bit but dolphins, whales and sharks tried to prevent me from checking the shallow bottom fish.

A week ago, the shallow bottom fishing was oddly slow and I suspected that the big north swell was the cause. Here’s how that trip went. To verify that, I started at the same area since the swell had slowed down, and the opelu bite was very good to start off. But the kanpachi, nabeta and juvenile opakapaka were still absent.

I trolled a live opelu out to 220ft and it got bitten but not taken by something not large enough to swallow it whole, it seemed.

Then a small pod of 5ft dolphins started playing in front of my kayak, so I left the area because I didn’t want to hook them. I don’t think they were the ones that mouthed my opelu but maybe they were?

I started heading to an area almost 2 miles south that I’ve only fished a few times that has held big opelu, big aha and ulua. I didn’t want to battle an ulua but hooked something as a lowered a weighted, live opelu down that felt heavy with some head shakes. My Phenix Black Diamond Heavy rod with Avet MX Raptor reel in low gear brought the fish in fairly easily and it turned out to be a mid-sized sandbar shark. Sadly, that was the first large fish I battled with the gear since fishing it for more than a year. It was nice to just grind the shark up.

Two small whales were spouting over the area I was headed to, which was a high spot that attracted bait, and luckily they kept moving south before I reached there.

Another live opelu got killed by an aha so I gave up on live baiting and focused on the damashi. I found the big opelu and they bit eagerly, but since I wasn’t gonna use them for bait I moved on to check the bottom fish.

The high (shallow) side of the drop off yielded small moana, small malu (side spot goatfish), hagi etc so I went past where the drop leveled off and found slightly larger fish on the flat areas. 1lb omilu, 1lb uku and 1lb malu.

The previous malu I kept turned out to be incredible steamed so I kept that but couldn’t find anything else to bring home.

My sister steamed the malu for my dad and said it was tender and flaky “melt in the mouth goodness”! I’ve only caught 2 keeper sized malu ever and they are an uncommon catch but are on the list of great eating bottom fish along with uku, yellowspot papio, kagami, weke nono, moana kali and nabeta.