After weeks of wind and rain, the water temp dropped to a chilly 75 degrees and the conditions got super calm. Too calm actually. There were boats, jet skis and kayaks fishing “the zone” and no one seemed to be hooking up. I did get one bite on my frozen opelu but my titanium stinger hook slipped off the front hook. Turns out it’s been doing that because I pinch the barbs of my hooks down, so the wire loop of the stinger rig doesn’t have a much of an obstacle to hold it in place.
I put on a full fluorocarbon double hook rig, got a hit and the back hook was chewed off! Can’t win, but hopefully that was just a shark. So I put on another titanium stinger rig, secured it a bit better and crossed my fingers.
It was so slow with all the boat and jet ski noise that I paddled a mile away into an area that has had ulua, uku and kawalea (deep water cudas) in the past. It was so peaceful there that a baby whale came by to check me out… magnificent looking but a little scary to be so close to me.
A really huge bait ball showed up near the bottom and my damashi rig got bit first, then completely cut off. Dropped the Williamson Benthos 100g Speed Jig hoping the 6.5″ length would keep sharp teeth away from the leader and got hooked up on the fall. Fish fought a bit but wasn’t too strong, and a 14″ kawalea came up, snagged at the dorsal fin. Those fish stink almost as bad as kaku but have a soft texture and delicate taste that folks like, so I kept it and tried to load up with more. I hooked two smaller ones, properly hooked on the bottom hook before I lost the school. My kayak and I smelled like kawalea but at least I had a few fish to share with friends. The Benthos jig didn’t have any teeth marks and my leader was not nicked at all. Success! It was the first time using the Benthos, which I hoped would look like a dying opelu to the pelagics.
At this point I had been flaying around for 5 hrs and the water was still too calm. I paddled back to “the zone”, which was pretty empty now since most of the guys gave up. Since I only had 2 frozen opelu left I caught a moana to live bait. Moana don’t work for me so I was surprised when it got bit, but what came up was a huge hagi on the back hook.
Wind was finally chopping up the water so I put out the second to last opelu and headed for the uku spot. Tap, tap, jerk, jerk, zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. Finally a solid hookup and a 4lb uku was safely in the fish bag. It took 7 hrs and 9 frozen opelu to catch that fish.
Sadly, the last opelu was taken by a shark.
While it’s really easy to paddle over glassy water, the fish don’t bite well. 8 to 10 mph seems to be the ideal wind range for me.
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