Hurricane Lane caused a lot of flood damage for most of the Island chain; our heart goes out to those affected. Hurricanes Miriam and Norman are heading north of the islands, thank God, sparing us from further storm damage and even blocking the trade winds for us. Looks like we’ll have some short periods of calm wind days.
Darren plans to take his daughter live oama trolling on the small boat again, Kelly plans to troll live oama off his SUP, and Frank and I plan to bless his new Hobie Revolution 13 by dropping live oama in the mid to deep water. All these guys are better oama fishers than I am, but I have the tubs to keep oama alive. I tried to catch enough oama for us but the bite was a lot harder than the week before Hurricane Lane came through. I’m thinking it was the big moon and not Lane that made the oama picky.
extra-small tub
small tub
Medium tub. You can see a couple moose putting up with their oama toddlers.
I targeted the pinkie oama on the first day. One the second day I tried for moose but they seem scarce now that so many small oama are in. I managed to hook one mega moose that broke my 3lb fluoro on its first dash. Had to settle for some consolation pinkies. On the third day I used 4lb fluoro and bait that a weke would hopefully eat, but none fell for it. The pinkies shunned my bait so I ended up with a handful of ring finger sized oama.
My tubs are way too overcrowded and I’m hoping the water quality stays decent until the fish are used.
9/5/18 Update:
Here’s how the live oama did compared to dead oama and no oama at all. If you have any catch reports to share, please send them our way.
Looks like you get some red ones too …
Yup, I had heard that red oama, which grow up to be the nocturnal weke, don’t work as well as the white oama. I have used red oama and they work the same or even better than the white ones cuz they’re usually thicker.
Interestingly, the red oama jump out of my tubs if a light scares them at night. The white oama are much less agitated.
Good luck to all this weekend! Sounds like you guys are gonna be loaded for bear. Got the bumbucha morning tide, so this fly-fisherman will be taking a break until next week.
The evening low tide isn’t good for fly fishing Jason? I’ve seen lots of tailers on the flats at low tide when the water is still, but maybe those spook too easily?
Not a big fan of afternoon fishing. I like to get in and out before the crowds show up. The tailers are definitely tough, but there are a lot of them around dawn too!
I got some time-off scheduled late next week and early the following week, so i plan to get my fill then… while the crowds are at work 🙂
I hear you Jason. And crowds tramping around must affect fly fishing even more than bait and lure fishing.