A series of North and North West swells large enough to run the Eddie Aikau contest swept through and were still present when we fished the Windward side of Oahu. Waves were wrapping and breaking on exposed outer reefs but the inshore reefs just had stronger than normal currents swirling. Friends found the oio bite to be good for 4lb to 6lb fish, so I was hopeful that the damashi fishing in my regular spots would be productive.
I had brought a 4-3/8 inch, sinking 2-1/4 ounce Duo Blazin 110 in case I had to stay shallow and whip the reef, so instead, I trolled it on the way out to the damashi spot, averaging 3mph. In 10 mins, a very skinny aha was on. I’m convinced this lure with its tight wobble would be deadly whipped for papio, and trolled for pelagics. I’ll try to test this lure in the future. You can learn more about Duo Blazin here.
Out at 140ft, there were non-breaking N swells rolling through, and chop generated from far off squalls. Not dangerous but not calm by any means. The bottom marks present on the last few trips were absent and all that came up were small opakapaka, yellow barbelled goat fish and tons of lizardfish. The target nabeta and kampachi were mysteriously absent. I managed to scrape up 3 opelu off small schools and gave up to see if the fish on the reef were behaving oddly also.
The fish were clustered in 40 to 50ft but a weird assortment of very small moana, hawkfish (not the po’opa’a) and unusual hinalea were caught. I did get lucky with a 1lb moana kali, but couldn’t find anymore since the “rubbish fish” were mobbing the damashi. The wind changed to a cold, offshore blast so I headed in.
Friends later told me that bottomfish often move deeper when large swells roll through so that could explain why the bottomfishing was so slow, with very small fish caught. But the oio fishing was better than expected for this time of year. Maybe the oio moved in shallow to take advantage of the swirling current stirring up critters?
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