Oama bait and switch

A friend was planning to troll oama off his board on the rising morning tide and I decided to wade out to the break to see I could get anything to bite a frozen oama retrieved slowly.  This would be my first time using oama this season since I’ve been so enamored with top water fishing.

I whipped the narrow raccoon faced top water lure that got so much attention on my previous trip, but nothing showed interest on the way out to the waves.  My friend paddled by and said the strong winds and rain were making it very hard to troll effectively. He had a legal omilu in his bag and said he was gonna try the inshore, more protected waters.

With the tide rising and the wind and rain getting stronger I decided to whip the oama past the reef before the conditions pushed me back to shore.  I didn’t want to deal with double hooking the oama since that tends to make the fish spin and is more prone to getting stuck on the reef, so I was resigned to missing fish that hit the back of the bait.  Sure enough, my first oama got shorter on each cast until I just had the head left.

Small omilu and kaku could be seen at the reef’s edge chopping away at my bait and eventually pulling it off.  Something pulled my bait down and my hook got stuck.  When I popped the line I broke off my 25lb fluoro leader and was too lazy to tie on a new leader so I just slipped on a weight and tied a hook on the 15 lb main fluoro.

I moved away from the bait stealers and cast into a deep channel that separated sections of the reef.  I let the bait sit away from the bait stealers patrolling the higher water column and it seemed to drift against the current, toward me.  Then the line was pulled into the nearby reef edge. Fish on, but it didn’t feel like much with my drag nearly locked down.  The fish was in a small crack in the reef and I could feel my 15 fluro line rubbing. It felt like a big hinalea or roi, and I tried to muscle the fish out of the hole.  Out came a bright blue omilu!  Instead of running out to sea it swam through the cracks in the reef past me towards shore. I followed it, freeing the line from the rocks. It was like being pulled by a leashed dog, running through shrubbery.

When I caught up with it, the omilu was pretty spent.  For a decent sized fish it only had taken out 20 yds of line but those 20 yds were pretty frayed.  I hadn’t brought tags with me since tagging in chest deep water was difficult, so my friend took this photo and I bagged the fish.  You can see what a gloomy, windy day it was.

I still had defrosted oama with me, so instead of wasting them I went back to the reef edge and the bait stealers found me.  After feeding 3 oamas to them with none hooked on the front hook I switched back to the narrow faced top water lure.  I was hoping they’d think it was another easy meal and sure enough a kaku swiped at it but missed repeatedly.  Maybe the chop was making it too hard for them to locate the bobbing lure?  I switched to the oama colored Waxwing Baby and hooked an undersized omilu on the first cast.  The bait stealers wised up and I headed in.

Frozen oama was definitely more effective than lures on this blustery day but the bait and switch tactic did work for a while.  The omilu measured 16.5″ FL and was close to 4lb. That matches the largest papio I caught inshore last year, also caught on oama.  Do you think we can catch fish on the top water lures to rival that size?