Prep for light wind days ahead

August 31, 2018 By Scott 6 Comments

Hurricane Lane caused a lot of flood damage for most of the Island chain; our heart goes out to those affected. Hurricanes Miriam and Norman are heading north of the islands, thank God, sparing us from further storm damage and even blocking the trade winds for us. Looks like we’ll have some short periods of calm wind days.

Darren plans to take his daughter live oama trolling on the small boat again, Kelly plans to troll live oama off his SUP, and Frank and I plan to bless his new Hobie Revolution 13 by dropping live oama in the mid to deep water. All these guys are better oama fishers than I am, but I have the tubs to keep oama alive. I tried to catch enough oama for us but the bite was a lot harder than the week before Hurricane Lane came through. I’m thinking it was the big moon and not Lane that made the oama picky.

extra-small tub

small tub

Medium tub. You can see a couple moose putting up with their oama toddlers.

I targeted the pinkie oama on the first day. One the second day I tried for moose but they seem scarce now that so many small oama are in. I managed to hook one mega moose that broke my 3lb fluoro on its first dash. Had to settle for some consolation pinkies. On the third day I used 4lb fluoro and bait that a weke would hopefully eat, but none fell for it. The pinkies shunned my bait so I ended up with a handful of ring finger sized oama.

My tubs are way too overcrowded and I’m hoping the water quality stays decent until the fish are used.

9/5/18 Update:
Here’s how the live oama did compared to dead oama and no oama at all. If you have any catch reports to share, please send them our way.

Live oama came through, I didn’t…

October 12, 2017 By Scott 2 Comments

The waves were 1 – 3 ft and the wind speed was about 8 – 10 mph on the Eastside, but the water was textured with some rolling swells past the reef. Conditions weren’t as clean as the last two times we fished there but it was still doable.

Frank and I took 8 oama each that were caught 2 weeks previously and pampered in my tubs. They had lost a bit of weight but were still chunky and irresistible looking.

On the way out we saw a monk seal flipping around near the turtles in the channel. That was a rare sight and hopefully indicated a lot of sea life. We headed in the direction I had fished the last time, staying safely away from the back of the waves and going from the dropoff at 40 ft onto the reef shelf. At 20 ft the fish finder showed fish on the bottom and I got a strike on the 1st live oama at 17 ft but it eventually shook off. Frank got a strike a few seconds after mine and landed his. My on-the-water shots were from my hat cam so I didn’t capture any of his action.

While Frank and I were in close proximity talking, I got a strike and my line had to be hand lined by Frank initially. He expertly cleared the line and gave me room to land the omilu. I didn’t plan to put my feet in the water to tag a fish so I bagged it. With a fish each, the pressure was off for us.

We continued down wind and I got a strong hit on my 3rd oama but I was too relaxed in my retrieval and it found some rocks. I could feel it running through the rocks and couldn’t pull it out. I gave it slack, it ran some more but never came out of that hole. It was really hard to break off the 25lb fluoro leader from the kayak. I re-rigged and tightened my drag, vowing not to be rocked again. All this action was within the first 30 mins but after we paddled into a deep sandy channel the bites stopped. U-turning around to head upwind to where we had come from, I got an odd nibble in 40ft of water.

I tightened the line and a fish rocketed out of the water. Awa awa!! I have been trying to catch one all year and was stoked. But it jumped again and was gone. The hooks pulled because my drag was so tight – arrrggggghhhh! Before I had a chance to react Frank got a pull, an awa awa leaped out of the water and it too shook the hook. Excited but bummed, we headed back against the wind and again, when we entered the 20 ft ledge I got a hit. The hook got stuck in my net when I landed the omilu and as I tried to free it I drifted ominously close to the back of the waves. I scampered away, cut the hook off the line and re-tied my rig. Frank radio’d in that he was going up the line to where he had success the last two outings.

He skirted the back of the waves, getting pushed a couple of times, while I stayed in deeper water and didn’t get another bite. The wind picked up to 12 – 15 mph and I headed for the safety of the inner reef. The tide had been dropping and the bite really slowed. Frank’s persistence paid off with another omilu on a halalu and a long trumpetfish on a live oama that was so bright yellow it spooked him.

Live oama proved to be irresistible on the first 1/3 of the falling tide but I “farmed” 3 of my 5 strikes. Hope we get another shot at awa awa before the year is up. Here I am with our combined catch before Frank cleaned them on the beach.

Live oama is still King but frozen halalu got the big strikes

October 5, 2017 By Scott 3 Comments

The early morning forecast was for light winds and small waves on the Eastside so Frank and I launched our watercraft and put out the thick live oama, Kelly and I caught last week. Frank headed down the coast, staying just behind the breaking waves, and I used my fish finder to survey the deeper reef behind the surf line. We kept in touch via waterproof walkie-talkie.

The tide was just beginning to rise so the bite was slow until it reached the bottom third. My line got stuck a few times and I was able to pull out the snag and retain my double hooks but was missing the oama. Finally it felt like a fish was on but the fight felt odd. A 10 inch yellow spot papio was hooked on the front hook and an 11.5 inch omilu was on the back hook. Gotta love the sticky sharp Gamakatsu Live Bait hooks. The yellow spot was probably trying to turn and swallow the big oama when the omilu got hooked trying to steal it from him. They’re doing their best synchronized swimming routine here.

I decided to try to tag them if I could them back in the water in good shape. Tagging one papio in the narrow quarters of my Scupper Pro is hard, two was quite a challenge, but the snag-free floating Promar net helped a lot. While I was tagging the second papio, Frank got a hit that pulled his live oama off.

Frank then landed an omilu on the live oama and a huge roi on frozen halalu, battling him for a long time. Then Frank and I both had our live bait pulled into the rocks or cut off our leader. Kelly paddled out to join us and I gave him the live bait bucket with the 7th live oama. I had one on my line and had used 5 to only catch those 2 papio I tagged. Not a very efficient use of the live bait. Kelly advised me to paddle up the coast towards the channel that’s fed brackish water, and he headed down towards Frank. They can safely fish much closer to the waves on their SUPs than I can, so they often fish together.

Kelly immediately caught an omilu on the outer reef and called Frank over. Frank converted his last 3 live oama to 2 lb plus omilu and then they both used halalu for some omilu caught and missed.

Going towards the stream outflow was the right call for me. There were weird plankton and maybe jellyfish blooms (I got a series of small stings on my ankles) and schools of larger bait fish being boiled on. I free spooled the last oama down and it was picked up before it reached the bottom. The fish felt pretty decent but ended up holing up in the rocks. I could feel it still on but couldn’t free it and eventually broke it off.

I hooked a frozen halalu in the nose and butt and let line out. Something tugged in rapid jerks and pulled it off. I put another on and this time it stuck… line screamed off the reel. You can guess what the fish was before you see it landed in this video. I followed it up with a small omilu on a halalu that I kept for the parents.

Trolling baits near the bottom was working really well so I wanted to see if I could drop a frozen baitfish down on my whipping setup and work it back. This failed miserably. The fish either missed the single, front hook or the bait fell apart after a few casts. At this point I realized I somehow knocked my walkie talkie in the water and it had floated away. I paddled back to the channel we had gone out of and waited for Frank and Kelly to see me since they were probably searching for me. Frank turned the into the channel and hooked and landed his biggest omilu, and Kelly missed two smaller omilu inside the break. Good, safe fishing day with the boys.

Here’s Frank’s catch. Look how big the roi is. With the understanding that roi isn’t that much more of a cig risk than papio, Frank filleted the roi and steamed it Chinese style. Said it was super ono. The omilu he shared with kupuna neighbors who rarely get to eat fresh fish.

Let me know what you think of videos. I’m still learning the basics of video editing, with a lot of help from Erik (@fishoahu) who has some killer action videos on Instagram.

Always get chance when you have live oama…

July 13, 2017 By Scott 2 Comments

peaceful paddle out

Screamah addiction lured Frank and me back to a deep water channel that came up empty the last two times we fished it. Erik had been consistently hooking big papio and ulua with poppers off his small boat, and I stubbornly felt we could get something big to bite our live oama offering.

We launched in absolutely beautiful, glassy conditions and glided to the general area. Hope began to fade as I scanned the fish finder’s blank screen. No bait fish near the surface and no white papio below. Our live oama went on a tour of the likely looking reef drop offs and channels for the next 4 hrs. Maybe the water was too calm and clear? The wind began to pick up, and the tide surged, yet the only things grabbing my oama were reef outcrops and a fat puffer fish. I got stuck 4 times, trolling over shallow water out of desperation, and the puffer was hooked so solidly in its lower lip that I cut off the hook. I was out of trolling rigs, and even bummed one off Frank, so I had to use my 20 lb fluoro main line to make a 2-hook trolling leader.

water has begun to bump up a bit

Frank got stuck a couple times also, but had devised an anchor system for his SUP and could retie his rigs while staying in place on the papa. Brilliant! I drifted a lot while retying rigs because I didn’t want to create an anchor trolley system for my kayak. Frank continues to improve his fishing processes and had built a “rack-a-yak” washing station for me to clean my yak off when we land. Maybe he can help me build the anchor trolley!

We were sun burnt, tired and really disappointed. Besides an omilu that Frank lost right at the net, we didn’t have anything to show for our efforts. We positioned ourselves to let the current push us in, and as we entered shallow, murky water, I took the fish finder’s transducer out of the water that was marking bait near the surface and Frank pulled up his live oama. Even though I had never caught anything this close to shore, in such silty water, I left my oama in the water out of complete desperation. Then the ratchet went off. The sound was faster than I would hear from a snag so it was actually a fish! I got the rod out of the holder, felt a few surges and the fish came off. Ugh… Frank was too far away to hear the ratchet but did hear me yell “HOOKUP!!”. He paddled over as I put the transducer back in the water. 5 feet deep and so silty we couldn’t see more than 2 feet down. He quickly deployed his live oama and I put a new one on and retraced my route.

“HOOKUP!!” Couldn’t believe I hooked something else and was overly excited. I’m so used to saying “hookup” instead of “hanapa’a” after fishing so many years in SoCal, I guess.

Expected a white papio hunting in the very silty water yet it was a fat 1.5 lb omilu that took the back hook down in it’s gullet. The fish bled during the hook extraction process so I kept it. After Frank took this photo, he trolled the inside and when I tracked him down he was landing a similar sized omilu. The fish finder said 3 feet!

We trolled the shallows some more but the bait fish were gone and so were the omilu. I guess God wanted us to each catch a fish and spare us the bolo head.

everything is strapped to Frank or his board for easy transport to and from the launch point

Erik fished shallow water on his bigger boat, and Kelly fished inside the break on his SUP. Both said the bite was very slow. We’re thinking it was because the moon was still so big and the clear night skies let the fish feed at night.

And Frank and I learned that as long as you have live oama in the water, you always have a chance.