Nabeta (razor wrasse) are considered the best tasting fish to fry in Hawaii, and one of the best tasting fish to eat overall. They’re found in sandy patches, near scattered reef, in 80 to 200ft. They aren’t picky eaters but are hard to find unless you’ve saved the spots prior, and didn’t tell anyone.

I’ve gotten a few small to medium sized nabeta when trying for opelu, but never really found a consistent bite. On this day however, they bit like crazy, and I’m guessing a number of conditions came together. Light wind, small waves, major lunar bite period, and overcast rainy conditions.

I had struck out on pelagics outside, with my sole live opelu being pulled off in 270ft as I reeled it in to check on it. I tried to catch another opelu in the deep and failed so I went in to where the shallow opelu had been and instead a 7 inch nabeta ate one of my CHL Minnows on my damashi. It had started to rain steadily and the nabeta bite improved. Something bit off 1 of my 3 hooks and yet 2 large nabeta came up on the next drop.

During this mayhem my reel knob broke off and I took that as a sign that I should slow down on the fish catching. Nabeta are easy to fish out because they are a slow growing bottom fish. I had a rod rigged up with an underwater GoFish cam I hadn’t used before, and I put a piece of bait on the hook hoping the smell would draw the fish within camera range. I couldn’t feel any nibbles because of the weight of the camera, but could feel a hooked fish on the line! I reeled up and found an angry nabeta at the end. I rebaited and dropped down again and could feel a fish run with the bait and then the line went slack. All good as long as the camera was recording.

Dropped the baited rig down again and could feel another fish get hooked. Kinda crazy to have these uncommonly found fish just hook themselves. At this point I had enough nabeta in the kayak and hoped I had some meaningful video to target these tasty critters more effectively.

I was stoked that the video clips clearly showed the nabeta mugging the bait, and when I slowed the video down, I could even see opelu and lai as the camera was pulled up to the surface (not shown in the video below but I’ll try to record other species next time).

Friends who hadn’t had nabeta in decades really enjoyed deep frying them, eating the scales like panko chips. I had been frying nabeta for my dad recently so my sister steamed the biggest one for him. I almost forgot to tell her to take the scales off!

Lemme know what you folks think of the underwater footage.