oama status 2018

The two little oama on the bottom just swam in from the deep and still have a bit of their “blue water” color. In contrast, the moose oama are probably gonna leave the safety of the shallows soon.

The oama came in late this year, finally filling in around mid-August. Few spots still have oama, 2 months after they came in. What is in abundance are pesky baby papio, hanging out with the mixed sized oama that are left and getting to the baits first.

The past warm years have had lots of baby papio, but never this many, this late in the year. I blame the late developing El Nino for that.

I tried to get past the papio to reach the oama on the bottom and found the effort to be extremely frustrating. With that many papio mouths looking for food, I hope the reef’s eco balance isn’t thrown off too much.

As often is the case with early season oama, the bite went from pretty good to lock jaw this week. Maybe it’s because the moon was almost full? A number of people reported the difficult bite, and Frank and I experienced it at the spot I had caught the 6 to 8 inch moose oama last week. The small oama shunned our palu and the 9 to 10 inch moose were willing to bite but we went 1 for 4 with 3 of them busting our lines! The one that was landed was probably weakened by taking the hook so deep it couldn’t be seen.

The early season halalu on the south shore were difficult to catch also. At some spots, the under 5 inch halalu were a slow bite, and other piles with larger halalu had moved off.

The pesky 3 inch papio are mixed in with the oama schools now, another indicator that the summer season really has started.

Catchable omilu and whites are showing up near the inshore bait schools finally.

Time to go fishing!

Oama Season Update – 4th week of October

Early season bait fish update – 4th week in July