Hawaii Nearshore Fishing

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Bolo headed on the kayak but got an assist for this shore caught big oio!

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The wind and rain forecast was worse at my preferred Windward spot so I tried an area that is normally more forgiving. Forgiving it was not, with 10 – 12mph onshore winds to start that increased to 15mph plus. It was hard to fish, and the target species (uku, opakapaka, weke nono, moana kali) did come up on the damashi but they were all babies. It seems like this area holds recently spawned fish in the Spring that keep biting when the older, smarter fish don’t.

When I was pulling my kayak up the beach I noticed a shore fisherman casting and retrieving his lure at a fast pace. He then started to sift the sand with a long handled net. He was trying to catch sand turtles (mole crabs) for bait but wasn’t able to find them in the blind. I gave him my frozen opelu bait so he could use it on a piece of line and attract the sand turtles to him. We talked story for a bit, then I left him to cleanup, which went quicker since there were no fish to tend to. 🙂

The shore fisherman walked up to me at the parking lot, carrying a still alive big oio! His name is Teddy and he said he was able to catch 2 big sand turtles and since he wasn’t planning to dunk, he put one on his hook he was whipping grubs with a plastic bubble filled with water. He casted out pretty far with a 7ft Roddy Hunter pole, 10lb Ande mono on his Shimano Sedona HG 2500 reel and 12lb JLine fluorocarbon leader.

He put the rod in his rod holder with the drag kind of loose and when he looked up line was peeling out! The big oio almost spooled him yet he was able to avoid all the coral heads in the shallow area he was fishing. Masterclass level of fishing with light gear!

He got his scale from his truck and the fish weighed a bit over 7lbs, which made the accomplishment even more incredible. Teddy called his friend to pick it up and iced the fish down with my unused bag of ice. The friend happily grabbed it to make lomi oio, and Teddy went back to see if there were more oio looking for sand turtles.

Seeing Teddy’s success made the sting of my bolo head less severe. 🙂

Holoholo: The one that almost got away!

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Our fly fishing Holoholo writer Jason shares the details of a how a big, smart fish had him on the ropes and he had to throw in the towel but luck and skill prevailed.

Jason: I managed to coax my friend Dave out for some fishing, so we decided to hit an old spot where we both started fly fishing together years ago. The plan was to hit our usual haunts, starting with bombing one of our favorite channels before moving west to sight fish. 
The channel ended up being dead, and an hour went by with only a single grab, which was probably a small papio.  With the tide bottoming out, we moved onto a shallower portion of the flat closer to the break to do some sight fishing.  

I saw a few as soon as I got out there, and had some decent shots with a couple follows.  I hadn’t done a ton of sight fishing with my new 11 ft Trout Spey, and was impressed by how it cast one-handed.   About the fourth fish I saw was the perfect setup – a lone fish swimming slowly straight at me from about 40-50 ft away.  I made my cast and carefully watched its body language as I slowly stripped the fly in.  I fully expected a follow, then a rejection, but instead saw him accelerate towards the fly, and wiggle a bit.   This was my chance!  I stripped sharply, felt the weight of the fish, and before I knew it he was headed for the horizon, literally.  

It felt like a pretty nice fish, and seemed intent on heading for open ocean.  Rather than risk breaking the fish off, I clamped down just a bit, but still allowed him to take line.  When I finally felt him slow down, I felt exactly what I dreaded – I could no longer feel the fish and instead felt the line stuck in the rocks.  I waded out as far as I could in a desperate bid to free it, but I was already pretty close to the break when I hooked him, so things were getting dicey.  At one point, I was up to my chest in water getting slammed by waves, so I decided to throw in the towel.  I was heart broken, but decided no fish was worth drowning over.

I reluctantly started walking backwards with the drag locked down, just like you do when breaking lead line while ulua fishing.   My line was stretching quite a bit, and at some point I realized the line wasn’t stretching at all, but was actually slipping against wherever it was pinned.  The line gradually loosened up and I could suddenly feel the fish again – I could not believe my luck.   I slowly brought the fish in, while praying that the line, hook and all my knots held together.  It would be incredibly anticlimactic for it to suddenly come off now, I thought to myself.  Luckily, the fish was so spent from struggling against the pinned down line that it came in without even making a second run.  I was ecstatic, mostly because I felt there was no way I should’ve landed it.   

Dave ended up getting a mongoose fish and a nunu, and the reports I got from other friends fishing nearby were mixed.  One friend had landed one and lost one, but the majority of the others (which include some VERY good sight fisherman) reported not seeing many fish.  Hmm…  I think I really got lucky today!