The papio are finally hitting oama with gusto

With the August traditional start of oama season right around the corner, the papio are finally hitting the oama hard. I’ve been hearing reports of some large papio caught on the East and West Side of Oahu, and even the South Shore is lighting up.  My theory is that the water was warmer than normal in the spring and that caused the common white weke and less common red weke to produce eggs earlier and in greater numbers than expected.  The papio either were not on the same biological clock or were so stuffed with oama they were biting baits lightly until recently.

Bouyed by yesterday‘s moderate success, I trolled some live oamas on my board this afternoon. The line cutting kaku weren’t bothering the baits so the papio had them all to themselves.  This 11 inch (head to fork of tail) omilu hit the back of the bait hard enough to get hooked on the outside of its mouth.  It was small but of legal size so I bagged it.  The first official papio of the oama season.

My next strike was stronger but the fish pulled line and rubbed the hook off on the reef. It had been so long I wasn’t prepared for a line ripper like that.  Then the bite abruptly stopped. No papio, no kaku, no nibbles.  But I’ll take it.  Bolo head is officially over.  Now I can select the poll response “Avid fisherperson, using oama for bait. Had some success this season.”.

For those of you who have participated in the poll, thank you!  So far it looks like a large group of readers are just casual fisherfolks looking for ways to improve their fishing success.  The next biggest group are avid fisherfolks who aren’t using oama for bait.  Interesting, I’d love to know how these folks are fishing during this epic oama season.

The papio traditionally hit the oama best in August, then the oama get larger and become uncatchable in September.  So take your best shot now but only keep what you can eat/use. That applies to both papio and oama.  Good luck!