Hadn’t fished the Windward side since April, and Tropical Storm Henriette was blocking the trade winds for a couple of days this week. I had to wait out the high swell it generated, so I launched late – 10:30am. It took an hour to reach the opelu spot, paddling through the moderate chop. Couldn’t find any opelu and the began fishing the bottom with damashi/sabiki for anything big enough and good enough to eat.
8 inch opakapaka and 10 inch weke nono (weke ula) were released. Then I fought something that steadily pulled drag and stopped. Turned out a weke nono was picked up sideways, mauled and dropped after about a 10 second run. The tooth pattern isn’t of aha (needlefish), barracuda or shark, which would have torn the soft fish. I thought of putting a live bait down but I wanted to keep looking for better fish with the damashi.
At 2:30pm, after 3 hrs of sifting through miscellaneous small fish, I made the decision to paddle a mile south since the wind was still calm. Bigger fish showed up on the fish finder and kawalea (Heller’s barracuda) were coming up on the damashi. I dropped down the Duo Metal Force 120g jig on 40lb fluoro with a teaser and caught a little hawkfish on the jig. 🙂 A kawalea then bit the teaser, and on the next drop the jig and teaser were bitten off instantly! Guess that’s the downside of using a bite-sized heavy jig. It can fit in big fish’s mouth.
Went back to the 20lb damashi rig with Completely Hooked Lures “Sprats” and hooked two 10 inch uku on successive drops. Every drop of the damashi was getting bit but still nothing large enough to keep.
Then I hooked something on the damashi rig that pulled line. Finally a bigger fish hopefully worth keeping. After a 3 minute battle from 100ft down, a shiny papio glimmered below the surface of the water. Could that be the rare kagami papio (African Pompano)? It was!! No wonder it fought so hard, using its flat side as resistance.
They are very thin bodied fish so I don’t consider keeping them until they’re over 7lb and losing their long streamers, but something attacked the fish on the way up and left deep gashes near the anal fin. I decided to keep this delicious fish and kage’d (spear gaff) it to secure it.
What a wild spot, with predators attacking such a large fish! I tried catching more fish but couldn’t find the hot spot again and it was 4:30pm, well past the time I normally paddle in. Sadly, I had to leave the best action I had all day. Even with the wind at my back, it took an 75 minutes to get in.
On land, I examined the kagami papio more closely and it appears that a fish grabbed it near its anal fin and ripped thru the thin skin. The wound was pretty deep and I felt justified in keeping the 4lb kagami.
I got more than a pound and a half of clean, firm fillets off it that will be incredible raw after dry aging for more than 4 days.
It was great to finally find larger, hungry fish and I’ll need another calm day to reach that wild spot again.
