I ended two of my boycotts: no kayak fishing and no oama for bait.  Kris and Eddy have been fishing off a tandem Hobie pedal boat in somewhat sheltered waters and have been encouraging me to dust off the kayak I haven’t fished in 10 years.  And I’ve been shunning oama for bait this season, instead throwing the Waxwing.

Yesterday I shlepped my kayak and the required gear down to fish some papas surrounded by deep water with Eddy.  A couple minutes into the paddle out and my back was already cramping up.  I couldn’t slow down my drift like I can when sitting on my longboard, kicking with my feet, so I had a hard time casting to the desired spots before I swept past them.  And when I fished the papas my Waxwing got stuck in the deep crevasses and I lost two Waxwing Babys. I was yearning for the simpler surfboard fishing days.

My fish finder detected a lot of fish near the papa edge and on the flat bottom but none of those fish wanted anything to do with the kastmaster I dropped down.

Eddy did much better using a heavy egg lead and plastic strip bait for small omilus, and caught a 1.5 lb white papio on a deep diving Crystal Minnow. He ended the day losing that lure to a papa also.

I initially started another kayak fishing boycott after my miserable performance but decided to attempt to avenge the loss of my two Waxwings.  Eddy, Kris and I fished the same spot today on the kayak. I started by dropping cut bait down into the depths and the guys deep trolled live, fresh dead and year old oama.  The guys’ oama initially got munched from the back, and since they weren’t running a rear hook, the fish got away.

Then Eddy took a screaming hit and battled a muscular 2lb plus omilu to the boat.  I was just getting nibbles and small omilu on my cut bait so I bummed a fresh dead oama and immediately got a hit.  It came up as dead weight and turned out to be a small hammerhead.

I bummed another dead oama and hooked a 8 inch white papio within a couple of minutes.  Guess the fish were around but waiting for the real thing.  The guys were getting bit on fresh dead and frozen oama but since none of us were using a trailing hook we all lost our best fish (or at least it appeared to be that way).  All besides Eddy’s omilu were white papio and a few small hammerheads.

On the way in the fish finder lit up with a bait ball. I dumped the cut shrimp, ika and aku belly overboard that failed me earlier.  Hoping I caused a frenzy, I dropped cut shrimp all the way to the bottom and it went untouched.  Remembering the two opae lolo a fellow kayak fisherman gave me when we launched in the morning, I dropped the fresh but dead lolo down to the bottom.

As soon as it reached bottom I hooked up with a 10″ white that was followed by his friends.  Kris and Eddy had a double hookup on oama and Kris took this awesome photo of the whites chasing the hooked fish up.

The next lolo was slammed instantly also, but this time it was a hammerhead.

The fish are really keyed on natural bait now, even if it’s dead bait.