Erik invited me out on his small aluminum boat again since the conditions were too good to pass up.  Sheet glass, no wind for a few hours, and small surf.  The water couldn’t be any flatter than this.  Only concern was the big moon the night before.

The plan was to fish upwind of the normal wind pattern and work our way back.  On the way out Erik saw aha attacking bait and threw his sinking JDM swimmer. An aha went airborne with it and shed the hook.  The heavy, calm air transmitted sounds for miles, it seemed. Whales were breaching and expelling air, turtles were startling us with their snorkly exhales and big 10″ to 12″ malolo were being chased around.  We even saw a dolphin school playing a few hundred yds off.  All that life got us pumped up.

We kept motoring upwind but the deep reefs were just too tempting.  Erik hooked up his portable Huminbird PiranhaMax fish finder and we trolled around until we found the edge of the 100 ft drop off.  Down went our small jigs but nothing was interested in them.  We kept  heading upwind while watching the fish finder.  Fish were stacked up so we dropped the jigs again.  Erik jigged his lure erratically after reaching the bottom, then let it hit bottom again.  His lure looked lively on 10lb braid and he felt something heavy.  Hage! But at least we found fish.

When the fish finder found clumps of fish we fished harder. I tried my 20 gm jigs, 30 gms jigs and 60 gm jigs until I finally got a hage too.  By then Erik had let go a few.

Then we stumbled on a spot where Erik hooked something 1/3 of the way off the bottom. It felt small but had a consistent tail beat.  Baby weke ula!

I was able to get one also, then Erik hooked a stronger fish with his erratic jigging motion.  It tried its best to stay on its deep, home reef but Erik coaxed it up. Omilu! It taped out at 11 inches, head to fork of tail, and was tagged and set free.

We drifted off that productive spot and Erik had a hunch the deeper drop off would be even better. At 140 ft the finder was marking fish a little suspended off the bottom.  I ended a dry spell with the lowly trumpetfish so we moved a bit and Erik hooked two more juvenile weke ula, and I brought up the ubiquitous hage.

Erik quickly dropped his jig back down on this productive spot and something strong ripped line for about 5 seconds but the hook pulled. Arrggh.  We’re thinking it must’ve been a big papio or ulua.

He even caught a medium-sized moana on a deep reef with his active jigging action.  My slow pitch on 17lb mono wasn’t even attracting the hage anymore.

We had an hr left of fishing time so we tried throwing poppers and swimmers on the shallow reefs but there were no takers this time.

I think the bite was slow in the shallow water because the water was so clear and the moon was so big the night before.  The big predators had been chasing bait the night before and the smaller fish were running from the predators.  They all must’ve been resting in their hidey holes until the big moon evening activity started again.

But wow, what a beautiful day to be on the water.  All the fish caught were released.

Here’s how we did last week on a flatter tide but smaller moon.