Darren, who has taken me on his boat to jig the Penguin Banks, and to troll nearshore for papio, was hoping for live oama to troll with his son and daughter.  I only had 5 small oama and 5 moose in my tubs so I told him I’d try to catch some oama but no promises since they weren’t biting that well the last time I went.  I changed the hook on my moose rig to catch 4 inch pinkie oama. The smallest hook I had was a #17, which is big for early season oama but smaller than I like to tie and unhook. I normally use a #14 Owner Mosquito hook to land the moose.

I went to my regular oama spot that hasn’t had much oama yet, and was surprised to see 8 other guys in 2 groups fishing.  That was a good sign, I guess.  Since the guys didn’t invite me into their group, I searched around and found a school of about 50 pinkie oama breezing in 2 ft of water.  I didn’t hear the other guys landing any oama, so I palu’d first and the oama ate a little but didn’t swarm.  Great time to use the super secret bait I stumbled upon the last time out, when I hooked a halalu on it.  I put on a small piece, dropped it down and hooked an oama!  Just to check how well they would bite, I dropped the bare hook down and caught another!!  I could see the group of 4 guys fishing while I fished and they hadn’t landed an oama since I got there.  The guys behind me weren’t saying anything either.  Hmm. I put on another piece of the secret bait and repeated the cycle, catching two oama, first with bait and the second with no bait.  Maybe the breezing pile was biting better than the others?

Eventually all the other oama fishers left but a grandpa and his grandson.  I lost track of my pile and had to fish the outskirts of theirs.  The grandpa welcomed me and said the oama weren’t biting too well for them.  I dropped down, and eventually landed one, then landed another with the bare hook again. At this point half my pinkies were caught on the bare hook, which is easier to do since the bait isn’t in the way of the barb, and most of them were hooked in the mouth, not foul hooked.

I felt bad that the middle school grandson wasn’t catching on their cut shrimp bait, so I offered my super secret bait. I only had a little left and they promised to keep it super secret.  Instantly the grandson was hooking up, and so was the grandpa. Grandpa, who was a seasoned oama guy who had tried all the premium baits, was amazed at how well it worked and started making plans to acquire some himself.  I told him that if I ever hear of people using that bait at that spot I know he leaked it!  He was so grateful he was telling me all his secret fishing spots.  The oama still bit for my semi-secret bait, and since I needed to keep them all alive, I looked in my bait bucket.  Was getting a little full, which is very unusual for me since I use the big #14 hook and not as secret bait.  And I’m kind of a junk oama fisher.

I said goodbye to the happy oama fishers and filled my 5 gallon bucket with 3/4 full ocean water.  On the drive home I could hear them banging the sides of the bucket and when I got home 12 were dead. The one pump wasn’t enough oxygen for all the oama.  That only happens when there are more than 40 in the bucket. I placed the rest in two separate tubs and they all survived.  Rough count, including the 12 that died was about 45 – 48.  50 is the daily limit for oama and I was under that.

Darren used some of the livies on his boat 4 days later, and Kelly used a few on his SUP 5 days later.  Both did way better with livies than dead oama.  Here’s how hot the live oama action was on Darren’s boat.  Here’s how Kelly did with his SUP trolled livies.

It sounds like the oama have finally moved into the normal spots on Oahu and are biting really well.  Get ’em before the big moon slows down the bite.