Holoholo: Ala Wai JDM vs Non-JDM and King Tide fishing

July 9, 2019 By Scott 7 Comments

Soon to be 8th grader, Matthew, fished the target-rich Ala Wai Canal with traditional and JDM lures, and fished the bottom and the top of the King Tide on a beach outing. Here’s his very entertaining recap and recommendations.

Matthew:

Ala Wai

Most people think of the Ala Wai as a stinky, bacteria filled canal, and that’s very true, but fishermen see it as a gold mine for fishing. Some of the less brave fishermen don’t fish it, so that takes away most of the crowd. But the fish that do remain in there have seen just about every lure on the market, including grubs, spoons, and poppers. So you have to switch it up a little bit. I use JDMs, which are lures that are made in Japan. I took Jacob, other Matthew, Luca, and Vance to fish the Ala Wai.

The first hour and a half was very boring, with no strikes, until I switched it up with the JDMs. I tried the Shimano Shallow Assassin Flash Boost 99mm, which is a solid lure, but I had never tested it much. First cast on it and boom, a nice Omilu hits it but the side treble got stuck in its scutes, which made it feel huge. I kept fishing with it for a while, and eventually landed a decent White Papio, and a good size Kaku.

Editor’s Note: Shameless plug – there are still 3 Shallow Assassin Flash Boosts left in the Store.

Then I switched to the transparent JDM model of the Lucky Craft Sammy purchased in the Hawaii Nearshore Fishing store for $7.50. First cast, and I could see a Kaku following it in. I paused the lure for a second and it jumped on it and immediately went airborne. I tagged and released it quickly and got back to fishing.

I landed one more on the Sammy before I decided to switch it up to the secret JDM lure that I’ve been using recently. No surprise at all, I landed four fish on it, three being Kaku, all violent and exciting strikes, but then I saw a bait school getting busted on in the middle of the canal.

I casted far out there and saw four or five White Papio each fighting each other for the lure. They missed it many times, but one eventually grabbed it and stuck on. Right away it started peeling drag. It took an easy 30 yards on the ultralight setup and I started to get concerned of the huge log it was trying to run into. I radioed back to my mom that I had a big one on, and I decided I had to lock down and boost it or lose it. Remember, this is six pound line main with a 2500 size reel, an ultralight setup. I locked down the drag and muscled it out from the log close to where I could see it. When I saw it, my heart dropped.

One treble was in its mouth and hanging by a flap of skin. I loosened up the drag, and that must be when it saw me and it took another 30 or so yards. It kept resisting for another minute or so before I got it close again. I kneeled down and grabbed the leader, and brought it up onto land. It was the biggest Papio I had caught in a while, so I was of course happy, and tagged it and released it. This was on a rising tide, and was around 2.1 feet when this happened.

Beach Fishing

Cut back to July Fourth and a -0.5 tide. This was the lowest tide I had ever fished and I could walk all the way to the breakers. First cast and the lure flies off to Narnia and I never see it again. Strike one. I keep walking out to the breakers, and retie. I spook a giant Oio and it scares me to the point where I fall off the boulder I’m standing on. Strike Two. I landed hard on the bottom of the boulder, right on top of a Wana (Sea Urchin). Dang. Strike Three.

I pull off the creature but leave the spikes on my foot, and wonder how I am going to get inshore, because if it took me 30 minutes to get out here with two feet able, how am I going to do it with one? I see my answer soon. I go into the sand channel, which is a lot deeper, but only up to around my waist, and walk all the way in. I quickly pulled the spines out of me, and was careful for the rest of the time not to step on that foot hard.

First cast since I made it in and boom, an aggro kaku hops on. It had a tag in it, and was my own! It had grown an incredible 4.5 inches since April, which is a lot. But that was the only fish of the trip if you don’t count an eight inch Omilu.

Go to July Fifth and I go fishing on the huge 2.5 King Tide. The spot looked a lot different from when it was a negative tide. I set my dunkers out from 6pm. I started whipping but the only fish that came up was a slimy Nunu (trumpetfish0, but it was caught on the Shimano Shallow Assassin Flash Boost 99mm. It got dark really fast, and I started to eat my food.

The rest of that night passed horribly quiet until 10pm, when we left. Not a single bell rang or a single bite. The dunking bite was horrible, as well as the whipping bite. Maybe because of the swift current? Keep tuned for future updates.

Holoholo: Heeia Fishpond – Trial 7

October 19, 2018 By Scott 8 Comments

7th Grade Matthew’s mature, insightful writing style continues to impress. This time he blesses us with a recap of his most recent Heei’a Fishpond Holoholo Day outing.

Matthew:
Note: I have fished this place six times before and this will be my seventh time trying it. In the past I have caught Moi, Kaku, Toau, and Papio over here. There seems to be an abundance of Toau and Kaku mostly though, all feeding on Ama’ama or Nehu. In the past I have had both good days and bad days, and found that the tide is a key factor.

I had signed up for a Heeia Holoholo day, because I thought that the old heeia story posted by Scott in 2015 was long outdated and needed another story to give more info on the pond. I got to the fishpond at 8:15am, where before the introduction I caught some opae with a net and put them in our bucket. We did a little introduction to everyone fishing at the event, then headed off to go fishing. I immediately got my stuff and fast walked the ½ mile to the fourth makaha. I set up, got my oama on, sight casted a kaku, and, screamer! Of course, it snapped the line after. I set up another oama rig and went to the third makaha. There I saw a school of around 10 kaku and a few good sized omilu cruised by once in a while. What were they there for? I soon saw my answer as I spotted some large nehu school in the deep section of the area. They all did not bite my oama at all, but that was about to change soon.

The current stopped and all of a sudden, the kaku started eating everything I threw at them, even lures. In that brief 20 minute period, I tagged 9 kaku and missed many more. The person next to me landed a few papio, and a few kaku in that time also. Then, like a magic switch, the fish all of a sudden stopped biting. I could still see them there, but none were even looking at my lures or oama. I eventually gave up, and this is where the opae came in handy. I used the opae and caught a nenue, kupipi, and many toau on the opae. It seemed like the less desirable fish were still willing to bite, at least. My friends that I invited, Jesse and Jayden, were having fun with the toau and kupipi also, who were also disappointed that the Kaku bite had shut down. We fished for the remainder of the time for toau, and then sadly, our day ended very quickly. We headed back and made a few casts along the way, but nothing came out of this last ditch effort for a Papio. We said our goodbyes to Jesse and Jayden, as well as the Assistant Executive Director, Kelii. This was a good day with many Kaku, and hopefully one of them will get captured.

Overall Fish Status: Oama are still here, but get them before they get big and move past the reef. It is best to find a new and “dumb” pile instead of the larger, smart ones. Sardines are still around, but are much less preferred than the oama, unless you are fishing around a sardine pile, which then live sardines would work. Halalu are around, but many spots have been netted, so keep your halalu spots as quiet as possible. Larger fish are coming to hit the piles, and even pelagics in some select spots. Akule appear to be hanging around in a few spots also. Nehu and Iao are littered around the shoreline, so if you see a small pile, it may be a good idea to cast right past the pile and see if a predator is waiting.

Lotta wading, not much catching

April 24, 2017 By Scott 4 Comments

Erik, Thad and I waded out to the break on a morning minus tide. Thad and I were throwing JDM sub-surface lures and Erik started with a small popper. We couldn’t quite make it out to the very edge of the drop off because of the water level and surf but we were still able to fish the deeper channels. I caught the first fish of the day, a chunky poopa’a that came up for the sub-surface lure as it crossed over the reef edge.

Thad had a 1lb omilu follow his sub-surface lure but it didn’t take it. Things were looking up at this point. He kept changing lures to see how they’d swim in the wind and chop. Erik changed to a casting jig after losing his popper to a bad FG knot, and started to kick up sand in the deep channel to attract sand dwelling predators. Unfortunately, he found the one pile of rocks on the sand bottom. After losing the jig he switched to a soft plastic encased nehu patterned lure.

We continued to cover ground but as the tide rose higher we were limited to fishing between the shore and reef break, in waist to chest high water. Basically the no man’s land where fish just pass through, going from the deep to the shore to feed and return back to the deep. Thad managed to catch a 3 ft plus trumpetfish in no man’s land that sucked down his tight wiggling, small sub-surface lure. Sorry, I didn’t take a pic because my phone was tucked away in my sling bag.

Spreading out, we approached the shallows from the deep. I was surprised at the lack of bait fish, which lowered our expectations for action in the knee deep water. Limu began to snag our hooks but Erik was able to rip his sinking 4 inch 1.2 oz soft nehu on the surface above the limu and hooked something that kicked up a lot of water. Kaku! Our target species for the shallows.

We weren’t planning on tagging fish because of the deep water we were wading in, but I had a tag kit with me so we tagged it on the beach. 17.75″ FL, good size kaku considering there wasn’t any noticeable bait in the shallows.

With that day saving catch, Erik left for home and Thad and I tried to scrounge up a kaku of our own. Thad had repeated hits as he walked his surface lure in the 2 ft of water, and I got hits on the sub-surface lure I had fished all day, but nothing stuck. With all the ground we covered we just caught one fish each.

The tide was great, the moon was small but no bait was around. Are we still between seasons, and the Spring bait influx hasn’t started because we’re in a La Nina cycle and nature is recovering from the strong El Nino cycle?

Top water / sub-surface lure session

August 30, 2016 By Scott 7 Comments

Erik and I fished one of our test grounds during the middle of the day, on the last 1/3 of the big rising tide. We didn’t expect a lot of action because of increased visibility and choppy conditions but hoped for the best.

I started with lure #2 in the picture above. Erik used a more traditional, rounder popper. Our poppers didn’t generate any follows for either of us so I changed to the narrow faced top water lure (#4). The pattern I used kind of looks like a narrow faced raccoon, in a fishy kind of way. It’s such a unique looking lure with a unique swimming action. It dips and bobs like a bait fish flipping and diving in the water. I threw it past a shallow reef shelf and when I retrieved it onto the shelf it looked like a patch of white sand was stirred up. The patch followed the lure as it dipped and squirted, and I realized it was a huge white colored fish! White ulua? But it was long and cylindrical. Turned out to be the largest oio I had ever seen free swimming and it was very interested in the lure. It then bumped the lure, realized it wasn’t edible and swam off disappointed. So was I.

I told Erik what happened and he put on a soft sided lure that resembled a large nehu or a slim sardine. On my next cast a 3/4 lb omilu came over the reef shelf to follow my lure but turned away. The fish were getting too good a look at our fake offerings.

We worked our way down the beach and Erik’s nehu lure attracted the attention of kaku and aha. We both missed fish so I changed to the Waxwing Boy (lure #5) that I could retrieve faster, and hopefully give the fish less opportunity to scrutinize it. Eventually I hooked a good size kaku that was followed by two others. It shook the hook off before I could land it.

Erik changed to a narrow stick bait that looked like a small mullet, and got follows and a blowup but no hookup. I put the narrow racoon-faced top water back on and got a lot of kaku follows but no hits until I paused to let it sit and a kaku jumped out of the water to hit it but missed the hook!

In short, we got a lot of follows and hits but didn’t land a single fish. Curse of the mid-day sun?

Red hot Waxwing action

July 23, 2015 By Scott 1 Comment

Went to check my favorite oama spot yet again, and there were none to be found. Kris was throwing a small plastic curly tail and caught some small omilus and chunky white papio. I started throwing the Baby Waxwing on the Curado 300EJ with fluorocarbon and soon enough was picking out backlashes just like I had been with braid. I was backlashing with all the centrifugal brakes turned on! How is that possible?

(Click here to see why I switched from braid to castable fluorocarbon. )

Out of desperation I set the spool tensioner so tight the lure couldn’t fall in free spool. I cast and the spool spun under control with no backlash. The spool shouldn’t have had to be tensioned so tightly, something must be wrong with the spool tension bearing.

Don’t I look stunned?

The sun was going down, it was time to leave and I didn’t even get a bump. As we walked back on the sand, Kris threw a Crystal Minnow but the water was so shallow he kept snagging limu. I carefully lobbed the Waxwing which swims a few inches below the surface and hooked and lost a kaku in 15 inches of water. My drag was set too light because I was backlashing so much!

My next cast was boiled on so Kris started videoing with his iPhone. Next cast, no backlash and another boil. Usually the fish only follow or hit twice and then wise up. During this pre-dark witching hour it seemed like a pack of hungry predators were looking for Waxwings to swim by. On my next cast, something hit halfway in and ripped drag. Turned out to be a 14 inch white papio (head to tail).

Here’s the video, sorry for the jumpiness.

It was a very impromptu shoot and I edited out the landmarks which shortened the length of the video. When we pau fishing I checked my drag and I had locked it down after missing the first kaku. No wonder the papio didn’t get too far.

very respectable kaku a few feet from shore

Kris captured the cast, strike and fight on video and I wanted him to get in on the red hot action. He took off his Crystal Minnow, put on the same Black/Chrome Baby Waxwing and hooked an angry kaku on the next cast! After releasing it, he got an even bigger boil that didn’t stay hooked. The boils lasted until the sun began to set, then completely shut off.

The Waxwing really performs in shallow water conditions. The red hot action with the large shallow water predators almost made me forget the backlash frustrations I’ve been having and I didn’t backlash once in the dark. I guess the spool tensioner was finally set tight enough.

Update 9/25/15: Charley’s Fishing Supply in Kakaako has the Waxwing Baby in Black/Chrome, Blue Sardine and Ghost Blue Shad.

The predators hit both hooks on the slack high tide

August 26, 2014 By Scott Leave a Comment

the pliers are 11 inches long

My captive oamas continue to expire prematurely, taking their tank mates with them. I’m convinced dying oamas let out a toxin that is hard to remove. I’ll blog about that and other difficulties in keeping oama alive, soon.

So without a supply of lively oamas, I planned to catch some fresh ones in time to troll them on the early afternoon rising tide. Turns out I’m a lousy oama catcher. A nice couple, Lance and Dianne, took pity on me and gave me some of their oamas, and yet I didn’t get out to troll them until the tide had almost peaked. The bite was as slow as the tidal movement so I was surprised to reel in the first kaku of the oama season. The kaku was lip hooked by the front hook and looked secure so I paddled away from the surf zone to delicately land the toothy, snapping creature. A feat not easily accomplished on a rolling surfboard. When I lifted the kaku it managed to flip and cut the line. Arrgghh, that was the first kaku of the oama season that didn’t cut the back hook off immediately and swim free.

I put on a new pre-tied leader and double-hooked another lively oama. Another kaku was hooked by both hooks, this time the hooks held and I was able to drop it into a dry bag and cut the leader off, all without losing a digit. I’m guessing the kaku like the slack tide since they often feed in placid water.

The slow bites slowed even more so I headed in and my clicker went off again. This time it was a 13 inch (head to tail) papio getting hooked on both hooks.

The first oama I trolled got weak and died on the hook. No bites. The 2nd, 3rd and 4th were lively and got hit hard.

Not exactly sure why it worked out this way but all three fish hit both the front and back hooks. No previous fish did that this season. Maybe the fish are really gulping down the oamas now? The last oama in the bucket earned its freedom.