Fish bite after the rain too! – PB uku catch, clean and cook

March 25, 2020 By Scott 9 Comments

The lingering Kona Low storm we had last week finally cleared and the winds dropped for a day, so I prepped to kayak fish. Only problem was that all State and City beach parks were closed to enforce social distancing! When it was confirmed that fishermen could transit through the parks, I parked outside, wheeled my kayak through and launched on an empty beach.

The wind was initially light and I paddled my way to the bait spot. Small bait schools passed under me but I could never connect with them. Gave up and went out deeper than I have been, to try to avoid the sharks. This must’ve been the spot because 3 boats kept drifting into my social distancing space. I guess they had no problem accessing the boat launch.

Felt hard taps about 20 secs after dropping down a frozen opelu and I was on with a hard pulling, jerky fish. Tightened the drag and tried to get it up before Sharkey caught wind of what was going on. It pulled hard until about 15 ft from the surface and was pretty worn out at color. Hooked in the corner of the mouth on the rear VMC inline hook. CHEEEHAAAA!!!

Its tail was sticking out of the Promar floating net but luckily was too docile to try to squirm out. Definitely the biggest uku I’ve landed and was stoked to get another since local fresh fish in the market is really hard to come by because of food supply issues.

Missed a fish on the next drop that pulled the bait off. Then had a bait reduced to just the head. Dropped the head back down to catch the culprit and something that felt like a school bus ate it and didn’t want to be lifted off the bottom. I finally broke free of that. My next bait got picked up by a heavy, head shaking fish and I was able to stop it and bring it up a little before it got real heavy and jerky at the 5 min mark and the line cut midway up the 40lb fluoro leader. I think it was some medium sized jack that got sharked.

The east winds picked up at this point and all but one boat headed for safety. I took their advice and paddled in to a deserted beach.

The uku ended up being my personal best at 23 inches and 6.5lbs. Since I didn’t have many pics to put up I decided to video the fish cleaning process, and planned to pull stills of what it had in its stomach. Well, turns out it had a small opelu, a baby tang-shaped fish, and something that looked like a small squid, but they were pretty decomposed looking so I decided not to use the stills. Fishing buddy Kelly reviewed my slowly improving fileting skills and pointed out areas of improvement:

Cut the fins off before scaling, so they wouldn’t get in the way
Scale the fish completely even in the hard to reach spots
Pat dry the fish if rinsed with water
Cut with long strokes to leave a smooth edged filet

I decided to share the compressed 2 min video of the catch and time lapse fish cleaning so others could learn from my mistakes. Shout out to Thad, our JDM fishing tackle purveyor, for providing the super sharp, super strong “SK11” all purpose shears from Japan. I was able to cut through all parts of the fish including the center bone!

The fish was shared with family and friends, consumed raw with citrus finger limes, steamed, baked and fried.

Wasabi kewpie mayo poke with red finger lime

I made a point to emphasize that the fish was only touched by my Coronavirus-free hands through the whole process, unlike a fish you find at the market. 😉

Finally, we were able to safely fish the deep!

September 22, 2018 By Scott 7 Comments

Overloaded Scupper Pro in red, new Hobie Revolution 13 in orange.

Tropical Depression Paul replaced our normal trade wind high pressure system (my dad is a former meteorologist) so Frank and I launched from an eastside beach and threaded the needle through the breaks in the surf. Frank was pedaling his brand new Hobie Revolution 13, and I was struggling to paddle my overloaded Scupper Pro to the deep. The ocean was so calm we could hear the sound of water lapping on surface. I mistakenly thought I was hearing fish tailing! My fresh dead oama didn’t get touched so at 40 ft I put on a live oama and it got hit instantly. I released the 10 inch omilu and put another live oama on.

Frank was trolling a whole, frozen opelu on a wire leader with an egg sinker near the front hook and something big ate it in 90 ft of water. My fish finder was showing bait around there so I marked the spot as I got into GoPro view of Frank. The fish pulled doggedly, and spun him around a couple of times. Frank spotted a long, silver fish that looked like his first ono he got last fall, so he pulled out his homemade, brand new kage and speared it but the point kept bouncing off the gill plate and the fish would jump after each stabbing. Frank and I were both cracking up at his first attempt with the kage. Finally he safely secured his “ono” but on closer examination it turned out to be a kaku, later weighing in at 10.6 lb! Our fish eating experts have advised Frank that kaku is delicious but has been implicated in ciquatera poisonings. Small portions of the filet portion of a kaku this size should carefully consumed.

Seeing Frank’s action on a big bait, I pulled off my live oama, added a 3/4 oz bullet weight to my 1/2 oz bullet weight and put on a frozen halalu. I free spooled it down and because the winds were so light, the 1 1/4 oz weight reached the bottom. Just as I engaged the reel the line took off! The head shakes felt like a good size papio so I was surprised when a kahala, smaller than the papio I was picturing, surfaced. Not wanting to deal with worms and the small chance of cig, I released it. The kahala battled hard from the bottom, up to maybe 50ft, then got sluggish as it tried to depressurize. It swam off strong on release though.

I put on another frozen halalu, and Frank resumed trolling whole opelu as we ventured further out. At 130 ft I added another 3/4 oz bullet weight to my trolling setup, bringing it to 2 oz. The halalu got picked apart by hage so I knew I was getting to the bottom. When we reached 200 ft my bait took off horizontally, caught in a strong deep water current and probably never got close to the bottom. Frank was further out than I was and closer to a loud splash that sounded like a small whale breaching. The large creature did it again and it didn’t look like a whale! Frank said the shark had told us twice to leave his fish alone so we turned around and worked our way in!

The bottom quickly rose from 90 to 50 ft, and the fish finder picked up a lot of fish on those ledges. I dropped a jig down and before I could work it back up my trolling rig with halalu went off. The fish was still on by the time I stowed the jig rod, and I had a fun scrap with what I thought was a 4lb omilu but it only taped out to 15.75 inches at home.

With Frank’s big kaku and this omilu in my fish bag filled with Arctic Ice blocks and frozen bait, the front hatch area of my kayak was top heavy. I was trying to turn side saddle to reach behind me and the fish bag shifted and I came as close to huli-ing as I ever have! Thank God there were no waves to help push me over. I’ve been adding all kinds of stuff to fish the deep and my kayak is bogging down under the weight. Gotta remove unneeded stuff and place some things behind me to even out the weight distribution. Thanks Jon S., early member of the Aquahunters, for the suggestion!

Frank hooked a papio that eventually rocked him, and I had fish hit my trolled baits and pull drag, then take the bait. I’m guessing they were aha. The surf looked bigger and I couldn’t paddle quick enough to navigate the surf channels so I paddled really wide around the surf zone. Frank stayed closer to the waves, nimbly avoiding them with his speedy Revo 13 and patiently waited for me to plod in. By the time we reached shore, after paddling nearly 6 hrs, I was wiped out and cramped up from paddling my bloated kayak.

Frank’s inaugural outing on his Revo 13 was a complete success. His handmade rod and paddle tethers worked well and his custom kage did the job on the kaku. He said the pedaling was much easier than paddling but his legs did feel it the next day.

Propelling himself hands free, he was able to rig lines, drink water, follow the fish and even reverse to give himself space to land his fish. I could barely pull my yak onto the sand but Frank had energy to spare.

I didn’t get the deeper water species I was targeting but learned some new grounds and caught my first kahala via kayak. I also discovered limitations to the way my kayak was rigged and to my mid-50s body. I think a Hobie is in my near future.

Kayak fishing the deep in light wind, small moon conditions

May 14, 2018 By Scott 6 Comments

The rare light wind, small wave, small moon day presented itself. My fishing partner, Frank, was out of town so Kelly graciously filled in. Kelly planned to troll frozen oama on the way out to the deep and then switch to damashi tipped with ika when fish showed up on the EchoMap 44CV fish finder/map charter. I planned to keep things simple and bottom fish with frozen opelu and maybe drop a jig with the other rod.

I hadn’t bottom fished with bait at this particular spot and wanted to see if that would be the difference maker. Kelly hooked an undersized omilu within minutes of launching and released it. I steadily paddled out, telling him my depth via walkie talkie as he followed behind. Before I reached the 100 ft mark, Kelly battled and landed a big aha which he also released since he hoped for better fish in the deep.

Fish gathered under me so I dropped a frozen 6 inch opelu down on a relatively small offset circle hook. The first couple were getting pulled off the hook without me even detecting the theft. Then some came back with 2 inches missing off the tail, or puncture marks through the body. At first I was excited because our last two big moon bottom fishing trips yielded no bites, but as I quickly went through my bait supply, concern mounted. Kelly damashi fished and after a while got a bite. Up came a big nabeta! Whoohoo! I was surprised they were in 100 ft since I thought we were over a rocky ledge, not the sand that nabeta hide in.

More of my opelu were mangled and the bite pattern sure looked like fang-toothed nabeta, though maybe I was wishful thinking. I was down to a 3 inch piece of a big opelu head and three 8-inch whole opelu. I changed to the 12/0 VMC circle hook I had been using in the past, since the offset hook I was using had too small a gap to slip around the bait. With the opelu head securely hooked through the nostrils, I dropped down and waited. Tap, tap, tap. Kelly was watching nearby when the fish ran hard with the bait and took drag for a second. It managed to pull the bait off without getting hooked. Sigh…

Kelly magically brought up a moana on his damashi and I hooked it through the nostrils and set it down. I drifted that moana further out, over ledges for a good amount of time and nothing hit it. It was a good test and in the future I’ll stick to opelu if I have some.

We started fishing our way in, and Kelly stretched his body by standing and fishing off the SUP. Takes a lot of dexterity and calm water to do that. At 60 ft he got a bite. Here we are, hoping the fish isn’t “black”.

I ended the day with no fish landed, extending my bolo head streak to 7. Kelly felt bad and insisted I take home the nabeta since that’s the only fish my wife wants to cook and eat. He said to gill and gut it right away and place it on paper towels in the fridge to keep it dry.

I rolled it in corn starch, deep fried it lightly, pulled it out to let it cool and fried it again, “Coach Haru style”. I slightly under fried the outside so it wasn’t as crispy as it should have been but my wife ate it to the bones. Nabeta is the best! Thanks Kelly!

And while I got skunked once again, I do believe I got so many hits and steals because of the dark moon phase and moving tide. Just gotta convert that knowledge to fish caught, next time.

Going further and deeper to extend the season

December 13, 2017 By Scott 12 Comments

In the past, our “season” has ended when the water temps cool and the bait leaves the inshore waters. Knowing this end was near, we prepped the kayaks and SUPs to do some nearshore bottom fishing further out than we had previously attempted.

The first outing yielded our first kayak/SUP uku but we had to paddle in to safety against strong winds and deal with having to keep the kayak straight in following seas. This was how that outing went.

After that successful but dangerous outing, we tried another deep drop off but the wind came up and was pushing us out to sea. We had to paddle for our lives to get in and were emotionally shook up from the realization that we would have needed to be rescued if we had become incapable of paddling hard for shore.

I had Go Bananas in Kapahulu add a rudder and some convenient bungee “trees” to my Scupper Pro, and I picked up a Garmin EchoMap 44cv fish finder/gps from West Marine on Black Friday. My hope was that the rudder would make my paddling more efficient, especially in windy conditions, the GPS would take us to nearby artificial reefs and mark hot spots, and the more advanced fish finder would accurately tell us what type of fish were below. I also got a Thule Hull-A-Port “J” style cradle to securely carry the second kayak on its side.

Our next outing was back to the deep water spot where we had gotten in trouble. This time we picked a day with almost no wind, and not much swell. The new fish finder/gps accurately told us the depth we were in, and marked what I think were fish on the bottom and a large bait school suspended from about 50ft to 100ft. Nothing was biting our jigs and I paddled further out to mark more bait. I heard Frank yell “hanapa’a” but couldn’t see what he was fighting. He tried to talk over the walkie talkie while fighting the fish but I was just getting fragments. When I paddled back to him, he was getting towed against the wind and current towards me! The fish didn’t want to tire, and he was battling it on an ancient Penn 440SS which was definitely not made to fight fish of that size. I shot video of the long fight and the very difficult landing process.

Frank will write up his recollection of the amazing, miraculous experience but here’s a preview of his catch. We still can’t believe he caught a pelagic on only our 3rd deep water outing. I jigged near the bait school for a few drops for nada and then we paddled in to take care of the prized fish.

On the next light wind day I was dying to return to the opelu / pelagic spot. Frank couldn’t make it but had designed and oversaw the process of fabricating a streamlined transducer rod and plate so I could hang the transducer over the side with as little drag as possible. This thing is work of art!

I tentatively paddled out solo but was relieved to see so many boats around and helicopters above. The bait school was deeper on this day, in 125 ft of water but again, nothing bit my jigs. I even tried trolling jigs and swimming plugs “Frank-style”.

Happy enough that all the new equipment was working well, I let the wind blow me in as I steered with the foot controlled rudder. At 100 ft I had a bite on the jig that came off. I assumed it was a hage but was still glad for that one bite. At 80ft I hooked something that felt like a small hage and winched it up. I was stunned to see a nabeta hooked on the rear treble of the Live Deception 2 oz jig with its swim bladder popped out through its gill. I marked the spot on my GPS and returned to it but couldn’t catch another fish. I’ll have to return with a proper damashi-type of setup.

My friend and fellow kayak fisher, Haru, told me how to gut the fish but leave the scales on and scrub the slime off with Hawaiian salt, then salt and pepper it before deep frying, taking it out to cool, and then frying it a second time to crisp up. My wife used a ponzu sauce and chilli pepper water Frank had given us, and that fried nabeta was ono with a non-fishy, sweet, soft texture.

So far the uku, ono and nabeta we’ve caught in deeper water have been much less fishy tasting than the papio we’ve been catching inshore. Now I understand why boaters often prefer bottom fish to reef fish.

Instead of waiting for the bait fish to return to the shallows, we’re now gearing up to target the bottom fish and pelagics of the winter season. Chee hoo!!