Ruined or improved my sub-surface lure?

April 16, 2017 By Scott 3 Comments

The superb casting sub-surface lure Masa recommended got punctured by a long tooth kaku a few weeks back. When I fished it the next time, it slowly sank instead of floating. I opened up the puncture, let the water drain out, sprayed some Salt Away to keep the sliding weight mechanism from rusting, and sealed the wound with epoxy glue.

To add to the wounded look I painted it with a white nail polish base and colored it in with a red marker. It floated, just barely, in an empty oama tub. The lure did look like a freshly scraped up bait fish so I started with it when Frank and I hit his whipping test grounds.

The lure cast further than the original lure. Within the first couple of casts a kaku hit it, missed and came back to finish it off. Hmm, maybe the mods made the lure more attractive? I walked the kaku in to tag, and Frank asked me if I wanted 2 fish to tag. His sub-surface lure got hit right after mine did! The fish that hit my wounded sardine taped out at 18.75 inches, the largest kaku I’ve tagged so far. Frank’s was just 1/4 inch shorter. The bigger kaku must be coming in now to feed on bait fish we have yet to locate.

The released kaku took their friends with them so we walked out to the dropoff as the tide rose to its top third. Nothing wanted our lures except for the two roi that thought my lure was dying. I killed the first but the second slipped off the hook before I could net it.

We walked back to the kaku spot and Frank hooked another one casting toward the shore.

This one measured 17 inches, a little smaller than his first but still pretty big to be so close to shore this time of year. In just a few whipping trips, Frank has gone from a neophyte whipper to one who can consistently catch the hard to hook kaku. Time for us go after some harder fighting fish.

And it sure seems that the doctored up lure I was throwing has been improved. Masa is still not letting me puncture and weigh down his lures though.

Shark. Roi? Broken Reel!!

March 13, 2017 By Scott 8 Comments

Frank and I returned to the beach where the mystery fish swum away with my JDM sub-surface lure. This time Frank was well armed with a new 8.5 ft spinning rod (on sale at Charley’s) and a new Shimano Stradic 4000 XG FK reel Masa, our JDM lure expert, sold at a great price. Thanks Masa! Armed with the same lure we used the previous week, we explored a new spot on the flat. Light colored kaku immediately responded to our lures, and nibbled on them but didn’t get hooked.

Still in mid-thigh deep water, and wading towards the drop off, I couldn’t believe my eyes. A 5 ft plus black tip shark passed by me and was headed straight for Frank. I calmly called out “Shark” and didn’t expect Frank to be too concerned but he froze in his tracks. The shark veered off about 10 feet in front of him and we never saw it again. Frank later explained that despite all his years in the ocean, he had never been standing in the water with a shark zeroing in on him. I guess I would have been unnerved too but I’ve seen black tip sharks in the shallows twice before and both times the sharks weren’t very interested in us. I assumed that sharks and kaku in the same area meant there was bait around for them, and as long as we weren’t the bait, it bode well for us.

The dropoff looked fishy but my Calcutta 200 TE bait caster free spool button got harder and harder to depress, and eventually jammed. An internal lever had gouged a hole in the reel’s aluminum frame and was stuck in gear. After just 20 casts I couldn’t put the reel into free spool and was out of commission. I was bummed but realized this was a great opportunity to watch Frank whip. He was making long casts over the drop off with his new equipment and thought he felt some tugs but his lure ended up getting stuck in a small channel cut, 5 ft down. There was no way his floating lure could have dove deep enough to get stuck there so I suspected a roi hit it on the surface and buried himself in the reef. Because of the value and scarcity of the JDM lure, Frank asked me hold his rod and swam down to free the lure. I didn’t remind him of the shark that seemed so enamored with him. He popped up with lure in hand and there was no fish attached.

He followed the contour of the reef drop off and hooked something that provided water resistance but not a lot of fight. Every so often he could feel a kick. It turned out to be a foul hooked, medium sized roi, suggesting that the fish that got his lure stuck on the bottom was indeed a roi also. We didn’t have a knife to dispatch the reef fish killer so I used my long pliers to squeeze it behind its head. What a beautifully patterned fish with a creepy mouth. Zoom into the photo to see the rows of backward facing teeth used to ensure that swallowed reef fish can’t back their way out.

We didn’t connect with papio or awa awa but we did see so very efficient predators. With all the life out there, we intend to return soon.

Maui lure fishing catch and release

June 29, 2015 By Scott 4 Comments

Mike from Florida, whom I met through this blog, is vacationing with family on the west side of Maui.

beautiful but deadly

Very adept in the use of soft plastics, hard bodied lures and jigs, Mike started off by dancing white bucktail jigs across the reef floor. The resident roi found them irresistible and Mike landed 6 before a monsta roi broke off his last jig. Unfortunately Mike had released these invasive destroyers of reef fish before I could text him: Kill Them All!

$18/pound in the fish market!

The following day, Mike pulled out a large Bomber Badonk-A-Donk plug, so named because it swims like shapely woman swishing her behind. He proved that Big Baits = Big Fish and landed this 4lb moana kali, breaking his rod in the process. Even though he realized how valued that fish was, he released it, not wanting to impact the local fishery.

Maui lizard fish

Here are two other pics of Badonk-a-donk caught fish. Mike found that the suspending model worked better than the top water model on the Maui fish.

Maui kaku

Both the lizardfish and the kaku really wanted that sashaying Badonka!

A well retrieved lure can be very effective, especially if the fish aren’t used to seeing it. Sure hope I have a fraction of Mike’s luck soon.

Update: Here’s the Bomber Badonkadonk’s Mike used. 1/2 oz – 3/4 oz top water and slow sinking models

No joy, got a roi, on the reef edge

April 13, 2015 By Scott Leave a Comment

I fished a different part of the reef edge dropping off into a deep channel last week. I started at the bottom of the low tide but the waves were still hitting me above my waist. I was hoping for some big strikes in the channel, instead I caught a barely legal moana and a roi (peacock grouper) dragging my bait over the reef edge.

The roi was only about 10 inches long but it’s mouth was disproportionately huge. Fully open, it looked almost 3 inches in diameter with small, sharp teeth facing inward to prevent swallowed prey from escaping. Very creepy looking, like the mouth of a space alien, not the Tahitian alien species it is. I can see how roi are able to target the juvenile reef fish and swallow them whole.

I wanted to kill the roi but wasn’t equipped to stab it, standing in waist deep water holding a rod. The best I could do was squeeze it below the gills with my long nose pliers. It swam off, mortally wounded, to become food for the fish it preyed on.

The tide rose and I retreated back to shore. Pretty slow day with a few small papio landed on the way in. All the fish were released, only the roi was harmed.

Here’s another post about the evil roi that’s been decimating our native reef fish.

Crazy stuff you see fishing the reef dropoff

March 10, 2014 By Scott 1 Comment

flat, shallow reef

Took a friend whipping on the south shore who hadn’t fished in more than 10 years. The afternoon trades were blowing and the sky was overcast, which made our initial dip in the water feel a little shocking. Then it started to rain. As we walked further out, the tide was waist high at times and rising, which made it harder to avoid stepping on the sea cucumbers and wana (sea urchin). Not the most comfortable conditions for my friend to reintroduce himself to the ocean.

The fish weren’t biting on the shallow reef so we hop scotched our way to the outer edge where it dropped off into a 12 – 15 foot sandy channel. We were trying to make out the shapes flitting around in the blue water beneath us, when a 4 foot oval brown hump porpoised out of the water 10 feet from us. This only added to the spookiness of the evening. Turns out it was a massive green sea turtle and it turned towards us and almost backed us into a deep hole in the reef; all we had to fend him off with was our poles.

The turtle eventually got tired of scaring us and bobbed back and forth in the open channel about 20 yds away. We went back to peering into the blue abyss and I dropped a bait down. It immediately got hammered by what looked like black humuhumus, saddle wrasse, and dark and light colored kupipi. Then a 2 foot black fish appeared out of nowhere and just as quickly disappeared. The swirling fish were about 10 feet down in the rolling water so we weren’t sure if we imagined that mystery fish. But when I hooked a hinalea, the black fish lunged for it and missed, wisely staying far away from the surface. The hinalea was released and we caught and released a number of fish before the black fish attacked a kupipi larger than my outstretched hand and ripped it off the hook.

My friend, still shaken by the turtle that was bobbing up and down making noises like an old man snoring, was captivated yet a bit uneasy watching the cycle of life struggle below. More determined to see what this dark marauder was, I dropped the bait down again, felt the rat-ta-tat-tat of a hinalea and then a half second later the line was peeling off my reel. The powerful fish ran for about 3 seconds and then the pull of the line stopped. A scuffed up hinalea was pulled up and when I lowered the hinalea back down it quickly got stuck in the rocks.

I strongly suspect the mystery fish was a roi (peacock grouper) and that it nailed the hinalea and holed up tight in the reef. I couldn’t free the line and had to break it off. Too bad because the roi are invasive predators that are so effective at catching reef fish that they are wiping out a lot of the native fish.

There’s literally a bounty on the roi. There are skin diver tournaments to see how many roi can be killed, and fishermen are being encouraged to catch and kill as many as possible. It’s believed that since the roi were not indigenous to Hawaiian waters, the Hawaii fish here still haven’t figured out that the roi are just waiting to pounce on them. From what we saw peering down into the edge of the reef, this appears to be true.

This photo was copied from the University of Hawaii’s Malamlama website. Beautiful fish, really efficient predator.