With the wind and surf light, I thought today would be the day I’d finally get a decent sized papio.. I trolled the spot I had previously fished in large surf and was hoping the papio would be around in the calm, clear water. The first 3 live oama got ripped so hard it was difficult to pull the rod out of the holder but all unbuttoned in a few seconds. I got one oama head back; the other two oama were pulled off the double hooks.
large trailer hook on left
I was using a large Owner bait holder hook in the oama’s tail to prevent papio from swallowing the hook and maybe it prevented the aha (giant needlefish) or kaku (barracuda) from getting hooked easily. Those strikes were much harder than the papio strikes I had been getting and I never saw the perpetrator. When I checked on my fourth live oama bait, the oama was still nose hooked but there was a 4 inch papio foul hooked on the trailer hook! Funny that the little papio could get hooked but not the larger fish that were stripping the baits so ferociously.
I trolled dead oamas in between the live oama strikes and never got any hits. I think the water was so clear the aha or kaku could tell whether the oama was alive, and could aim it’s attack to miss both hooks.
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