Small tungsten jig outfished bait and a normal jig!

We were blessed with light wind this week so I was out on the windward side again, working on my damashi skills and doing more tungsten jig testing. Even though the big tide was rising, there wasn’t much current so it was easy to pan around, mark fish, then drop on them.

I started out looking for opelu, couldn’t find any, so I went past 100ft to a depth Capt Erik told me to check. Sure enough there were marks along that depth contour and my first weke nono (Pflueger’s goatfish) came up. I was stoked to find one, but since it was a little one I let it go. Drifted off that mark and must’ve been over sand because a nabeta came up next. Then it was non-stop deepwater lizardfish so I put one on my bait rod and dropped it down. Nothing touched it. Hmmm…

I took off the lizardfish and put a previously thawed and refrozen opelu on, and motored out to 200ft and back into 150ft with no love. Grabbed the jig rod with the 2.5″ 2oz tungsten weight and dropped down. Boink! A lizardfish grabbed it! Caught another lizard after that and decided to get off the sand and head in for the zone I had action on the last trip.

So the little jig was gobbled up the pesky lizardfish but could it attract a much bigger predator? I was over some spread out marks and was hopeful since that jig has been hit on every third drop or so, and kablam! Something strong and heavy yanked the rod tip down and was peeling out line. Now this was a decent fish and I really wanted to see what had hit the jig. A few minutes later a 15lb class kahala was expelling bubbles near the surface. My first kayak kahala on a jig, and a really fun fight on the Shimano Game Type J XHeavy rod and gold Trinidad 14 reel.

I motored/paddled back to that spot, and 2 drops later a stronger fish pulled line in long spurts. It shook its head so I assumed it was a bigger kahala but it turned out to be a GT that had just made ulua status. I had to tighten my drag further than I had with the kahala, and was surprised how much stronger the ulua was. I would say that the ulua fought harder initially but the kahala pulled more steadily. I couldn’t believe how the little jig, just 2.5 inches long, was causing these bigger fish to frenzy. I released the mini ulua also.

So now my confidence was super high and I dropped the jig again, and on the way down something swam off with it. This was an even stronger fighting fish and I tightened the drag as much as I dared. The runs were spurty and I could feel twanging on the line. Then there was less resistance and I cranked hard for a few seconds, came tight again and whatever was on the line at that point surged for the bottom and then the mainline cut. Either the fish was swimming towards the surface when the line felt slack, or I was reeling up a fish head that then got finished off by a shark. And the shark took my lucky blue jig whose eyes I painted with nail polish. 🙂

I put on a center weighted 100gm lead jig, found the mark again and… nada. I never got a bite again. Was it because the jig was too big or did the fish move off? The tide was reaching the slack high but I think the little magic Tunsten jig would have gotten bit some more. I just have a few of those left and look forward to trying them again!

Here’s what the fish looked like swimming off. Not the most graceful release of the kahala butat least he didn’t have any problems will a full air bladder keeping him on the surface.