Red hot 2 hr fishing window

new best day ever!

Today was supposed to be the light wind day of the week so I took 6 live oama and 4 fresh dead ones out for a surfboard troll.  I planned to fish a different stretch of the beach by paddling into the wind and letting the wind bring me back to the launch point.

I started with a recently deceased, medium-sized captive oama so I wouldn’t waste a livey on the way out to the surfline.  Nothing bit it after reaching the break and trolling parallel to it for 10 mins, so I was about to put on a livey on instead.  All of a sudden my ratchet screamed and the rod bent over.  I hadn’t heard my ratchet scream all year so I was initially spooked!  It was actually hard to pull the rod out of the holder; man I missed those screamers.  The fish pulled drag in a straight line, then let itself be worked in halfway, then took off again.  While I was loving the fight, I strongly suspected it was an oio that decided it needed to add oama to its diet, and I really wanted a nice sized papio instead.  The fish started shaking its head, which gave me hope, then pulled line straight out again.  After a hard fight against a tight drag, the largest omilu I caught in 2 yrs flashed on its side. It was hooked on the front hook and somehow had broken off the hook that was in the oama’s tail.  I was stoked and I had only been fishing 20 minutes.  I contemplated heading back in but I didn’t want to waste the live oama.

I put a live one on and something pulled it off without sounding the ratchet.  I wonder what could have done that?  I put on another livey and this one got eaten by a 10 inch C&R omilu.  The next livey hooked a 15 inch (head to tail) omilu that pulled drag nicely and was added to the catch bag.  2 good sized omilu make a decent catch so again I contemplated paddling in but I still had 3 live oama and 3 dead ones.

The next 3 live oama were mangled and crushed but I couldn’t hook the culprit despite the two hook setup.  I put a dead oama on and saw the floater go under.  When I retrieved the line all I got back was the oama’s head.  I put the second to the last dead oama on and let the wind blow me back to the launch site.  The ratchet went off but the fight felt a little weird.  There was a lot of resistance but the fish wasn’t pulling a lot of line.  When it got close, I realized why. Somehow a 14″ omilu was hooked on the front hook and a 10″ omilu was hooked on the rear hook! And another omilu was swimming with them, trying to join the party.  Crazy.  I shook the 10″ omilu off and kept the 14″ (head to tail) omilu.  That was more than enough fish for one day, so I dumped the last dead oama and went in.

Darin’s oio

Darin, whom I had met before, was dunking ika from the beach.   He said a lot of undersized papio had been hitting his baits in the last hr, with one legal omilu in the mix.  I wished him luck and ran into a guy who had been hooking legal white papio on his Crystal Minnow from shore.  His C&R lure action was in the last 30 minutes.  While we were taking he noticed that Darin was on a nice fish.  What the heck was going on? Were all the planets in alignment or something?  We went over to watch Darin’s fish make numerous strong runs before being subdued.  The oio went 21″ and 4lbs and Darin packed up his gear to get the fish home in good shape for fish cake.

There wasn’t a particularly good solunar activity period today but something made the fish feed aggressively at the break and at the shoreline. I suspect the fish are trying to make up for all that lost time spent hunkering down during the stormy, humid weather.  The trade winds have cooled the water nicely and it looks like the papio season isn’t over yet.

The larger omilu I caught went about 19″ (head to tail) and made 3 lbs on my not too accurate hand scale.  Not that big as omilus go but bigger than any omilu I’ve caught last year and this year.  With so many papio competing for not much bait this season, I suspect larger than normal papio are coming onto the reef to find food.