October: Light wind, big opelu and small pelagics eating tiny baitfish

It had been windy since Mid-May but the wind finally dropped and just about every week of October was fishable. Big and medium sized opelu have been catchable during the day but the pelagics have been puny. Schools of rat mahi and baby kawakawa/aku were chasing small flying fish and nehu. Historically, September is the best kayak fishing month for us since the bigger pelagics are still around and the wind normally is light enough to get out but we missed out on that.

Last week I paddled out to my go-to Windward spot on a sheet glass morning and was shocked to see a school of mahi making circles around me where I caught a mahi on the last trip. I casted a tungsten jig ahead of them, and they checked it out but weren’t fooled so I put a year old frozen opelu on and trolled around for a while with no love.

The opelu were scarce, probably because they were spooked by the marauding mahi, and I finally caught a medium sized one. Not wanting to waste it on the rat mahi, I caught a 6 inch kawalea (Heller’s barracuda) and put that out on the new Phenix Black Diamond XHeavy rod and Avet MX Raptor rig where the rat mahi had been circling. It got picked up! The fish made some jumps but came in easy in high gear, and as I was getting ready to land it, it pulled the hook. I had accidentally set the lever drag too high and the stiff rod didn’t have much play I’m thinking. Ugh.

Then all the bait on the bottom included the juvenile kawalea disappeared. I’m thinking the mahi got a taste for kawalea and raided them. Ended the day having a rat mahi grab my medium sized live opelu and fail to swallow it and I bagged a lone nabeta.

Not wanting to waste anymore time on puny mahi, I checked another Windward spot this week with high hopes. I hadn’t fished it since April and was expecting it to be loaded with bait and pelagics. Wrong. I couldn’t find bait balls in the shallow spot that was previously loaded, and had to go out to 300ft before stumbling upon a huge mark stretching from 150ft to 200ft. Hoping to hook opelu at 150ft, I was surprised when a big opelu hit just 30ft down. I picked up two more 12 inch opelu and released a number of hard pulling 14 inch kawakawa. I put one of the opelu out on the Phenix Black Diamond XHeavy rod / Avet MX Raptor and a bird school popped up about 50yd away. I towed the opelu over to the bird school expecting some kind of tuna to slam the bait but nothing took it. All I could see of the bird school were scales sinking out that were much larger than opelu scales.

Since nothing wanted the big opelu and I had two more in the bait tube, I drifted over a deep reef and expected an ulua or kahala to slam that bait. Nada. There was nothing significant on the fish finder either. So odd to be so dead. More than an hour of dragging that live opelu over the reef didn’t yield a sniff. So I headed in to a shallow bait spot I hadn’t checked earlier and bait was balled up tightly. Caught 3 perfect 8 inch opelu and swapped out the big opelu that was still alive. Then small pelagics started busting on bait so I towed my small opelu over and it got pulled and scraped but alas, the predator couldn’t swallow it.

To salvage the trip I tried to find some nabeta but like last week, could only catch one. When I cleaned the opelu I was surprised to find them full of 2 inch silver fish. I had no idea opelu preyed on bait schools too. So the bait ball I saw 200ft down was small baitfish and the opelu and the kawakawa were above the bait, attacking them! No wonder my bigger opelu were getting ignored. I gotta try again with smaller lures and the smallest opelu I can catch.