kawalea barracuda

For boat, kayak and even from shore, calm days with little swell are much more comfortable to fish. But those days are often extremely slow.

As an unplanned experiment, I kayak fished the same area 3 times. The first was overcast and a little choppy; second time had cross swell and a rain storm chased me off the water. The third time was glass calm with no swell all day.

On the first outing I stumbled upon biting fish in the early afternoon that happened to coincide with the solar – lunar bite time. The bite was surprisingly good and a 25lb ulua landed on the light jig rod ended the day.

The second outing was a little slower because it wasn’t during a good solar – lunar period but when the rain storm rolled in the fishing got really good. Akule, opelu and lai were hunkered down in relatively shallow water and biting on every drop of the damashi. Unhooking the lai slowed me down and I left when it got too cold to fish. Akule normally don’t bite during the day and must’ve thought it was night time!

The third time was so pleasant to fish. Easy to paddle, no current to push me off the spots but only the less desirable fish like taape, moana and hawk fish bit well.

I slow trolled a bite size opelu out to 200ft and back to the shallows with no interest from predators. Bait stealers eventually ripped it apart at 100ft and a big kawalea took a frozen opelu later.

The water surface looks like a mirror in this photo!

I had to work really hard to catch some nabeta to salvage the trip, chumming around and baiting my damashi rig with opelu skin.

So why do fish bite better on the darker days with more chop on the water? It seems like prey fish such as opelu and akule feel safer when they’re harder to be spotted by larger fish, and the predatory fish feel they can ambush prey fish better when it’s not as easy to see them approach. So on the calm, bright days, you’ll see the smaller fish on the food chain moving around carefree, while the larger fish are taking naps some where.

What should you do to help generate a bite? Chum around to start a feeding frenzy and use the freshest bait possible.

After weeks of wind and rain, the water temp dropped to a chilly 75 degrees and the conditions got super calm. Too calm actually. There were boats, jet skis and kayaks fishing “the zone” and no one seemed to be hooking up. I did get one bite on my frozen opelu but my titanium stinger hook slipped off the front hook. Turns out it’s been doing that because I pinch the barbs of my hooks down, so the wire loop of the stinger rig doesn’t have a much of an obstacle to hold it in place.

I put on a full fluorocarbon double hook rig, got a hit and the back hook was chewed off! Can’t win, but hopefully that was just a shark. So I put on another titanium stinger rig, secured it a bit better and crossed my fingers.

It was so slow with all the boat and jet ski noise that I paddled a mile away into an area that has had ulua, uku and kawalea (deep water cudas) in the past. It was so peaceful there that a baby whale came by to check me out… magnificent looking but a little scary to be so close to me.

A really huge bait ball showed up near the bottom and my damashi rig got bit first, then completely cut off. Dropped the Williamson Benthos 100g Speed Jig hoping the 6.5″ length would keep sharp teeth away from the leader and got hooked up on the fall. Fish fought a bit but wasn’t too strong, and a 14″ kawalea came up, snagged at the dorsal fin. Those fish stink almost as bad as kaku but have a soft texture and delicate taste that folks like, so I kept it and tried to load up with more. I hooked two smaller ones, properly hooked on the bottom hook before I lost the school. My kayak and I smelled like kawalea but at least I had a few fish to share with friends. The Benthos jig didn’t have any teeth marks and my leader was not nicked at all. Success! It was the first time using the Benthos, which I hoped would look like a dying opelu to the pelagics.

At this point I had been flaying around for 5 hrs and the water was still too calm. I paddled back to “the zone”, which was pretty empty now since most of the guys gave up. Since I only had 2 frozen opelu left I caught a moana to live bait. Moana don’t work for me so I was surprised when it got bit, but what came up was a huge hagi on the back hook.

Wind was finally chopping up the water so I put out the second to last opelu and headed for the uku spot. Tap, tap, jerk, jerk, zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. Finally a solid hookup and a 4lb uku was safely in the fish bag. It took 7 hrs and 9 frozen opelu to catch that fish.

Sadly, the last opelu was taken by a shark.

While it’s really easy to paddle over glassy water, the fish don’t bite well. 8 to 10 mph seems to be the ideal wind range for me.

Fish bite way better in the dark, rainy conditions than on calm, clear days

Super calm conditions on Southside = lots of boat traffic, and slow fishing. Eventually caught some fish.