A lot of spots reported new, large schools of oama biting well last week. Papio were seen chasing the piles and more predators will switch off from targeting halalu and focus on the oama. Maybe these new oama snuck in on the New Moon at the end of second week of August? Better late than never.
Expect the large surf and local flooding from TS Lane to disturb the oama schools for a while, but they’ll return hungrier than ever.
Normally oama come in before halalu, and it’s the second week of August yet the halalu reports have been better than the oama reports. I checked one of my oama spots that was barren a month ago and there was a small school of newly arrived, pinkie-sized oama. They weren’t acclimated to people yet and didn’t eat well initially. I was geared for moose oama anyway, with a size 14 Owner mosquito hook, so I palu’d some oily baits in the hopes of bringing in bigger oama.
The pinkie oama tentatively bit the big hook and I had a few in the live bucket when I spotted a school of about 6 moose oama breezing on the outskirts. It took more palu to hold them and the first moose pulled off the hook, causing the others to scatter. I located the moose herd again and hooked a 9 inch one that stretched my 3lb leader but was landed. Yee-hah! The herd scattered and came back, and I tried lifting a 10 inch mega-moose off the bottom. Kerrr-pack! The leader snapped above the hook.
I had to walk back to shore to get another pre-tied oama pole. I couldn’t find the moose herd so I fished the pinkie oama pile with another guy. A very small school of nehu got chased through the oama school and then I hooked a 5 inch halalu! Maybe that halalu was part of a school chasing the nehu?
The pinkie oama bite didn’t really pick up so I quit and the other fisherman gave me his two oama he caught since it wasn’t enough to warrant an dunking trip. Nice guy!
Seems like the oama season is barely getting off the ground.
Here’s all the moose and pinkies in one tub before I moved the pinkies out to give the moose more room to stretch out. The halalu thrashed around in the halalu tub so much it had rubbed its tail off to a nub and was dying the next day and had to be euthanized.
Almost 2 weeks ago we made the prediction that oama would start coming into the south shore oama spots over the next few weeks, and be catchable by the end of July. We also said that papio would hitting the oama piles hard by mid-August, and be catchable with oama. Well, that turned out to be accurate and a little conservative.
A day or so after we posted that, we got reports of newly arrived oama being spotted in growing numbers, and by late last week they were biting pretty well. We held off on announcing this to give the early oama fishers first crack at oama that haven’t learned to avoid human interaction. The daytime oama predators have been showing up and mugging the schools so looks like the season is ON!
I checked my early season oama spot last week and there was a small school of newly arrived oama that were very skittish. 6 to 8 inch Moose oama came to the palu so I targeted them instead and got 4. I prefer the Moose over the small oama, to drop live in the deep with my kayak. Problem is the Moose aren’t eating in captivity yet. I guess I gotta catch a few easily trained oama babies to teach the Moose to eat.
The last few years were epic oama seasons, possibly because the water got warm early and drew the baby weke in. The schools kept coming and stayed into the early winter. This year, being a colder La Nina year, seems to have reverted back to a “normal” or even “slow” oama season. I’ve just seen a few scattered oama on the south side that didn’t look catchable.
If the theory that oama first show up on the south side of Oahu then migrate northward is true, we may be getting our oama soon. Craig, an oama scout on Maui, has reported that oama are coming into the south side of Maui now. Since Maui is south (and east of us) maybe the other oama schools are working their way north toward us. Hope so!