out of season papio

The waves on the South Shore were down and the winds were very light this morning.  I decided to check my deeper water spot that’s normally exposed to surf and wind.  I hadn’t trolled oamas there in 2 months and I wasn’t expecting much after blanking at my other trolling spots.  I still had a few oamas left in my tubs at home and it was really hard to take my pets out to use as bait.

The first live oama went untouched for an hour until a lizard fish somehow hooked itself on the back hook while the oama still dangled on the front hook.  You would think an oama followed by a lizard fish would make an excellent presentation but nothing wanted them.

I replaced the two with a  lively 5 inch oama and continued paddling around on my longboard.  30 minutes passed. The last two times I had trolled here, all the baits were hit within 10 minutes.  I guess the epic oama season of 2014 finally came to an end.

I headed in, staying on the reef edge of the channel and my ratchet went off.  The strike was completely unexpected and the fish felt very strong. I felt the line rubbing on the reef off and on and tried to paddle over to free it.  Once it came free I buttoned down the drag and the fish came in fairly quickly, having spent most of its energy on the early runs.  For some reason the 14 inch papio fought so much harder then the others caught during the oama season.  Maybe it was upset that it fell for the out of season oama.

My take on all this is that the predators aren’t looking for oama anymore but if they happen to stumble upon one they’ll still eat it.