Caught the kawas (kawakawa and kawalea) and nothing went to waste

August 21, 2021 By Scott Leave a Comment

The rain squalls and wind took a break on the Windward side so I was finally able to take Terry out on his Scupper Pro to explore the deep. He had guided me on my inaugural Westside kayak outing a couple weeks before. The deepest he had previously gone on the Windward side was about 130ft and that’s where we started dropping the damashi in hopes of finding nabeta. All I could manage was a puny skinny nabeta I released. An opakapaka pup of about 8 inches came up next and I tried depressurizing it so it could go back down but it floated so I had to keep it. Then the deep water lizardfish swarmed us.

We kept going deeper in hopes of finding the opelu piles. Terry put down a lizard fish as live bait and took a big strike that managed to come off his hooks. That gave me the idea to drop down a twice frozen opelu while hunting for the bait schools and after a while my reel went off! After a spirited, jerky fight a very round kawakawa came up that had taken both hooks so far down I had to cut the leader. I brained it to calm it down, and bled it over the side until the runoff ran light pink. The kayak cockpit looked like a crime scene and took a while to wash off.

Terry headed into the shallow ledge to damashi for reef fish, and I tried to find more pelagics. Sure enough my multitasking skills tripped me up. My damashi rig snagged my bait rig and as I tried to clear the mess I wrapped the bait rig line around my rudder. So I headed into the shallows to look for Terry. I couldn’t raise him on the VHF radio even though I could hear other kayakers 2 miles away, and turns out his radio wasn’t receiving properly. I finally reached him when I was a half mile away. This drove home the point to test your safety equipment and make sure all are in proper working order. Had I needed help Terry wouldn’t have heard me and I would have had to call the Coast Guard or nearby boaters. Terry has since been in touch with the radio vendor to trouble shoot the range problem.

Terry had been catching small and medium moana on his damashi and had one out as bait. I joined him, and found good marks on the deep end of the ledge, as I drifted shallow. Small weke nono and moana climbed on but nothing big so I reset my drift and went over a better mark with bigger fish. Dropped the 60gm tungsten jig with glow spinner blade, which makes the jig look like it has a fluttering tail, and made contact with something that yanked a lot but couldn’t pull drag.

Up came a Heller’s Barracuda (kawalea or kawelea, depending how exact you want to be) that tried its darndest to either throw the jig or bite through the leader.

Nothing bit Terry’s live moana and we had been out for 5 hrs and still had a couple miles to paddle in (paddle and motor in, in my case), so we set a comfortable pace and let the trade winds help us. It was so nice not to have disorganized following seas to worry about.

The damashi bite was better than it had been the last few trips. Dunno if that was because the water had warmed or if we were just able to fish more effectively in the calm water. Some odd ball fish landed were baby kaku, small trumpet fish, baby porcupine fish and some mystery fish that busted our light leaders.

I picked up some ice on the way home and left the kawakawa and kawalea packed in a cooler over night. When I cleaned the fish the next day, they were in great condition. The kawakawa weighed 10lbs after being bled the day before, but was fat because it had eggs and a belly full of decomposing small fish of various species. One looked like an oama that hadn’t made it in from the deep yet. That’s a good sign, maybe the oama are making their way in now.

Kawakawa has a bad rap as a bloody tasting fish, but if bled well, cleaned properly and wrapped in paper towels to remove more blood, the flesh has a great consistency and more taste than small yellowfin tuna. There’s also so many usable parts. The kawakawa was shared as follows: center bone for my neighbor to deep fry, fillets with dark meat removed for a friend to eat raw, eggs for my oama buddy to palu, belly strips went into the freezer to be used as bottom fishing baits, and the bloody scraps went to my sister’s cats. I also prepped the opakapaka pup and kawalea for my neighbor to steam.

It’s better to be lucky than good – doubled up on the pelagics!

June 5, 2021 By Scott Leave a Comment

Late Spring / Early summer is the best time to catch pelagics on live opelu. Problem is catching opelu during this time is really hard because the opelu know the pelagics are hunting them. Best shot at the opelu is at the crack of dawn before the pelagics are on them but I’m not even driving to the launch at that time. Still, I was hoping to catch some hungry, stray opelu and drag them around in the deep.

I decided on the Windward side because the winds were lighter than the South side, and hit the water at 8:40am, 3 hrs after sun rise. Bait was scattered and sure enough they didn’t want to eat my damashi. In fact, the only thing falling for it were the deep water lizardfish. No nabeta, no opakapaka. The conditions were so nice that I decided just to run the Bixpy motor on the lowest speed and drag the damashi out to 300ft just to see what kinds of marks would show up on the fish finder. At 200ft something latched onto my damashi hooks and I was completely astounded to see two small, yet perfectly sized opelu come up. It was after 10am! I put one on my live bait rig and tried to keep the other alive in a juice bottle, head first, changing its water every so often.

I tried catching more opelu but failed so I went out to 300ft (a whopping 3 miles from land) and turned around and let the current push me in while I tried to hook something else with the damashi. Sure enough, with my damashi on the bottom in 280 ft, the opelu was taken and the line was going out fast. It probably took more than a minute to bring in my damashi, so the fish had run out a lot of line. I was really hoping that it was my first shibi (small yellowfin tuna) and it had some frantic head shakes, but when it came up I saw silver and sadly thought it was a kahala. Instead it was a tired kawakawa because I had fought it with so much line out, so when I bled it over the side it actually died a few mins later and the blood stopped flowing.

I had drifted in and was at about 250ft when I dropped the second, now dead, opelu down. It got slammed near the bottom and this fight was a strong up and down battle. I put the Avet SX Raptor in low gear and grinded it up. Because the fight was so short, the kawakawa came up green and took longer to get in position to kage. It stayed alive while being bled over the side, and after 5 mins I got tired of leaving a bloody trail for sharks to follow so I bagged in my my Large Hobie kill bag. There wasn’t room for another big fish so I headed into the shallow drop off to check on the reef fish.

The last time we fished the drop off was in April and the water was a chilly 74 degrees. This time it was 77 degrees and the damashi got hit on every drop until the hooks and lead were broken off. Misc reef fish (lai, moana, hawk fish, etc) were released. Looks like this year’s inshore season is about to go off.

I feel so blessed (and lucky) to have stumbled upon the two opelu the way I did, and be able to put them in front of kawakawa. The kawakawa, being big, bloody fish required a lot more special handling than a 5lb uku. I had to stop to buy ice on the way home to supplement the Arctic Ice in my fish bag, and had to cut all the darker, bloody meat away from the filets to maximize taste and shelf life.

But the recipients of the fish ate ’em within hours of receiving it and said was similar but tastier than yellowfin tuna and less *fishy/bloody* than aku. That was a testament to the instructions Kelly provided (bleed well, ice well, clean all the guts and dark meat out right away, wrap in paper towel and change the towel when it gets bloody).

Holoholo: Damashi & Jig Mayhem!

March 25, 2019 By Scott 3 Comments

I met Robert on the beach as he was cleaning up after a full day’s kayak fishing outing. He recently purchased a used, big brother version of my kayak and we bonded over that. He scored a big uku that day, here’s that post. Since that day, Robert has been very helpful in getting Frank and me better prepared for the pelagics in the deep.

Robert: Well to start off, I am Robert Richards, a nearshore/offshore kayak fisherman. Hailing from Wyoming, I spent most of my childhood on Oahu and decided to become a resident back in 2007. Of course, I pursued shore fishing: whipping, dunking and even trying my luck at sliding dead baits. (no luck on the slide for me haha) Eventually I wound up wanting more. Not having resources for a boat, the next best thing was this kayak fishing craze that is seriously in right now. I picked up a kayak and the adventures began! Similar to Scott, I chose the Ocean Kayak Trident Ultra 4.7 after countless hours of deliberation as my current kayak.

Managed to get out this past week with a couple kayak friends, Reece, Jay and Ben. Normally we do an early launch to try and pick up any Menpachi (Brick Soldierfish), Aweoweo (Bulleye) or more importantly some Akule (Big Eye Scad) for the sunrise bite. However, this trip turned into a later launch at 5:30am. We tried to catch Opelu (Mackerel Scad) at the start of light, but none to be found. Hoping to catch the lowering tide, minor bite period at 6:30am to 7:30am and sunrise bite, we decided to rush to one of our spots.

We paddled towards our spot. On the way, Jay and Ben found an Opelu school, but they were too far away for me to try for that school. I tend to keep moving out on the water always searching for bait or good marks. I paddled up on one of my other spots and BOOM fish finder is loaded with the marks of Opelu. Got my damashi sent down just in time into the school. Picked up what felt like 2 Opelu. Started to work them up and then “ZZZZZZZZZZZ” my reel starts peeling line, over 100ft gone in the flash of 3 colors of braided line. I thought to myself: ‘as long as I can last this run, I have a chance at landing this fish’. Well, I did, this battle turned into a 400ft drift and nearly 40 minutes of tug of war before I finally landed a decent 10lb class KawaKawa (Mackerel Tuna) on my 10lb test damashi.

The top hook was hooked perfectly in the corner of the mouth. This isn’t as common in these cases, sometimes they get hooked in the mouth but usually they get snagged on the body somewhere. KawaKawa are strong fighters all the way until the end, no matter the size. The problem is that they rather enjoy stealing your Opelu in the depths and destroy your damashi. To counter this, I usually have a looser drag when I fight my Opelu, fighting the Opelu in a pumping fashion using my reeling hand to cup the spool for added drag pressure.

The day went on and the bait became scarce, though there were plenty of larger marks varying from the bottom to the mid water range. This calls for the jig! I dropped my jig in about 340ft and started to crank. About 12 cranks up, a huge hit and line peels off the reel. Unfortunately, I couldn’t stop this beast and it ran into a cave resulting in line cut in bankrupt fashion… I quickly tied a damashi and jig then back towards the original spot. However, Reece has been on a jigging binge, catching an estimated 20lb Kahala (Greater Amberjack) and couldn’t help himself but to challenge me to a jig battle! OH, it’s on! We found some good marks, dropped our jigs then, BOOM, Reece is hooked up and I am left with no bite, cheering him on. A battle ensued and Reece landed his PB Ulua (Giant Trevally) estimated to be between 25-30lbs! Caught and released.

We dropped a few more times with no takers, so we headed back towards the first spot. I paddled over another school of bait, this time managing to land one. Threw it out on the live bait rig and trolled. Making to the original spot, I found another bait school and hooked into what felt like one more Opelu. Score! Until… ‘ZZZZZZZ’, another 100ft of line ripped from my spool and the fight on another pelagic on my damashi started! This time I was a bit more impatient due to my time limit rapidly approaching. I wound up tightening my drag a little too much and broke it off. The funny part is the pelagics loved stealing the bait off my damashi this day but none wanted the rigged up live nor dead baits.. Sometimes that is how it goes. The over all conditions, stayed calm with light winds, plenty of sunshine and minimal current. The bite stayed on from about 6:30 until about 9:30-10am. Total trip went for about 6hrs.