Small papio continue to slam the oama

August 28, 2014 By Scott Leave a Comment

The pre-adolescent papio that were scratching the back of the oamas a month ago are now big enough to swallow the back hook. That’s fine if the papio are keepers (larger than 10″ head to fork) but bad if they’re undersized. I went up in hook size to avoid gut hooking the undersized fish, but still had to cut the line to release a deeply hooked 9 inch papio today.

Also landed a 3 ft aha (stickfish), had 2 oamas ripped off their hooks, and landed a legal papio on my last bait. I was trying an area I had never trolled before, and like the other spots I’ve recently visited, this one was full of pint sized papio.

It’s great that the bite has turned red hot lately, but sad that the hardest fighting fish of the season has been a stickfish!

I haven’t been taking any pics of the recent just legal papio. I just take 4 or 5 live oama with me to limit the amount of papio juvies I may hook.

Maybe I should troll a jumbo sized oama to deter the little guys from taking a bite?

The predators hit both hooks on the slack high tide

August 26, 2014 By Scott Leave a Comment

the pliers are 11 inches long

My captive oamas continue to expire prematurely, taking their tank mates with them. I’m convinced dying oamas let out a toxin that is hard to remove. I’ll blog about that and other difficulties in keeping oama alive, soon.

So without a supply of lively oamas, I planned to catch some fresh ones in time to troll them on the early afternoon rising tide. Turns out I’m a lousy oama catcher. A nice couple, Lance and Dianne, took pity on me and gave me some of their oamas, and yet I didn’t get out to troll them until the tide had almost peaked. The bite was as slow as the tidal movement so I was surprised to reel in the first kaku of the oama season. The kaku was lip hooked by the front hook and looked secure so I paddled away from the surf zone to delicately land the toothy, snapping creature. A feat not easily accomplished on a rolling surfboard. When I lifted the kaku it managed to flip and cut the line. Arrgghh, that was the first kaku of the oama season that didn’t cut the back hook off immediately and swim free.

I put on a new pre-tied leader and double-hooked another lively oama. Another kaku was hooked by both hooks, this time the hooks held and I was able to drop it into a dry bag and cut the leader off, all without losing a digit. I’m guessing the kaku like the slack tide since they often feed in placid water.

The slow bites slowed even more so I headed in and my clicker went off again. This time it was a 13 inch (head to tail) papio getting hooked on both hooks.

The first oama I trolled got weak and died on the hook. No bites. The 2nd, 3rd and 4th were lively and got hit hard.

Not exactly sure why it worked out this way but all three fish hit both the front and back hooks. No previous fish did that this season. Maybe the fish are really gulping down the oamas now? The last oama in the bucket earned its freedom.

The papio want their oama lively or not at all

August 20, 2014 By Scott Leave a Comment

still small but getting bigger

The papio are definitely coming onto the reef to dine on oama. And this year there are so many oama around that the papio are discriminating. I went to a deeper water reef area to troll oamas I had caught yesterday. 3 lively ones resulted in 3 papio. 2 freshly dead ones weren’t touched at all. Picky papio!

The first papio fell off my back hook as I was trying to measure it. The top hook ended up stabbing my finger but luckily didn’t go barb deep. Still sore though!

I was watching my orange floater behind me as I trolled over the spot I hooked the first papio and saw it go under. I thought I was seeing things until my ratchet went off. I bagged the 10.5 inch (head to fork of tail) papio and put a fresh dead oama on. Trolled all over for nada. Then I put on the second to the last lively oama and within a minute the 12 inch (head to fork of tail) papio hit.

With two papio in the bag I set the last lively oama free. The papio are hitting the oamas hard now. The trick for me is to find where the larger ones are. My previous spots are loaded with 8 inch papio with small man complexes.

The papio are finally hitting oama with gusto

July 31, 2014 By Scott Leave a Comment

it’s legal, barely

With the August traditional start of oama season right around the corner, the papio are finally hitting the oama hard. I’ve been hearing reports of some large papio caught on the East and West Side of Oahu, and even the South Shore is lighting up. My theory is that the water was warmer than normal in the spring and that caused the common white weke and less common red weke to produce eggs earlier and in greater numbers than expected. The papio either were not on the same biological clock or were so stuffed with oama they were biting baits lightly until recently.

Bouyed by yesterday‘s moderate success, I trolled some live oamas on my board this afternoon. The line cutting kaku weren’t bothering the baits so the papio had them all to themselves. This 11 inch (head to fork of tail) omilu hit the back of the bait hard enough to get hooked on the outside of its mouth. It was small but of legal size so I bagged it. The first official papio of the oama season.

My next strike was stronger but the fish pulled line and rubbed the hook off on the reef. It had been so long I wasn’t prepared for a line ripper like that. Then the bite abruptly stopped. No papio, no kaku, no nibbles. But I’ll take it. Bolo head is officially over. Now I can select the poll response “Avid fisherperson, using oama for bait. Had some success this season.”.

For those of you who have participated in the poll, thank you! So far it looks like a large group of readers are just casual fisherfolks looking for ways to improve their fishing success. The next biggest group are avid fisherfolks who aren’t using oama for bait. Interesting, I’d love to know how these folks are fishing during this epic oama season.

The papio traditionally hit the oama best in August, then the oama get larger and become uncatchable in September. So take your best shot now but only keep what you can eat/use. That applies to both papio and oama. Good luck!

South Shore Inshore Sweep on the orange weight!

May 7, 2014 By Scott 4 Comments

calm, overcast conditions

The flats were calm with light Kona winds and overcast skies. Tide was too low for the surfboard so I walked it.

Great day to try the weights painted orange to resemble the eggs of sand turtles.

After 45 mins of inactivity I gave the orange weight 5 more casts before changing back to the regular red color, and boom, an almost legal omilu hit.

Then two legal moanas bit near the reef dropoff.

The bite slowed so I tried the gold kastmaster and all I got was a very confident lizardfish.

Back to the orange weight and cut bait and an oio was on! Papio, oio and goatfish, is that close to an Oahu inshore sweep?

Not sure if the orange color helped but it didn’t seem to hurt.

Decided to catch, photograph and release (CPR) so the fish were alive and moving when I took their pics.

South Shore Omilus

February 19, 2014 By Scott 1 Comment

Fished the secret South Shore spot with my friend Frank and as expected, the spot produced and Frank hammered the omilus. They were a better grade today with a few stretching past the 10″ minimum size. Although they were the perfect pan fry size, all were released.

The fish bit on the first 1/3 of the tidal rise from 0.0 feet and shut off as the tide was halfway to its peak.