Elijah is a 5th grader and has been fishing for about a year with his dad and younger brother. He wanted to share his love of fishing and some slide bait catching tips with the readers.

Elijah: I don’t whip a lot because my brother can’t so I float baits right now . I can do a report on catching small pan size fish like mamo, kupipi, and slide bait size hinalea.

So this is my 3rd time at some popular Westside beaches and I kinda know where the fish are and when I cast out to that spot (usually where red is surrounding a sand bottom) I felt a small tug and out of nowhere my drag starts screaming and I set the hook but it popped so I retrieved my float and the buggah took my bait so I walk to the cutting board and use my secret method of hooking squad and making it look appetizing.

So I recast and jiggled my floater and suddenly my float zooms 3 feet under the water and I see the fish, a nice sized mamo and some omilu! And I see the floater straining a mamo to the surface and I quickly reel it in and it was a good 2 pounder! Soon after we had to pack up and leave.

Next day we went to another beach and we set up. I was rushing to get my and my brothers floats in the water and on my first cast I realized I had missed an eye! So I reeled in the float that was 4 feet away from me and felt a small tug I reeled it to me and found a baby hinelaea chewing on my hook!

My dad told me to put it in the bucket for slide-bait and I quickly dropped it in. The secret to catching small fish for live or slidebait is to look for small pools of water in the rocks and just drop your float down and wait. You can also find some kupipi and mamo in the holes and hinalea. In the end I caught about 15 live baits, a poopa’a that we took home and some squirrel fish (my dad wasn’t happy about the squirrel fish) and was a successful day! If you are setting up a slidebait and need bait FAST jiggle your bobber for a couple of seconds.

Aloha, Elijah