The two little oama on the bottom just swam in from the deep and still have a bit of their “blue water” color. In contrast, the moose oama are probably gonna leave the safety of the shallows soon.
The oama came in late this year, finally filling in around mid-August. Few spots still have oama, 2 months after they came in. What is in abundance are pesky baby papio, hanging out with the mixed sized oama that are left and getting to the baits first.
The past warm years have had lots of baby papio, but never this many, this late in the year. I blame the late developing El Nino for that.
I tried to get past the papio to reach the oama on the bottom and found the effort to be extremely frustrating. With that many papio mouths looking for food, I hope the reef’s eco balance isn’t thrown off too much.
Hoping that in 2-3 years that theyll all become 10-12 inchers though! I have been experiencing a very large amount of baby papio too. When I casted my lure a huge swarm came up and attacked my uni-knot. Ive experienced this in many places this year. Ive also had a hard time catching oama with all these baby papio also.
Thanks for the feedback Matthew. Yeah let’s track whether there’s a huge increase in legal papio next year or so.
-scott