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Thank you for letting me know how you feel about my recent Top Water posts. Of those that participated, most didn’t mind reading about that type of fishing so I’ll continue posting about my Top Water addiction. It’s just so much fun watching fish explode on these lures in shallow water.
I’ll try to work in other fishing methods, partly by necessity since the inshore papio season is quickly coming to an end.
Here’s the poll results.
A friend was planning to troll oama off his board on the rising morning tide and I decided to wade out to the break to see I could get anything to bite a frozen oama retrieved slowly. This would be my first time using oama this season since I’ve been so enamored with top water fishing.
I whipped the narrow raccoon faced top water lure that got so much attention on my previous trip, but nothing showed interest on the way out to the waves. My friend paddled by and said the strong winds and rain were making it very hard to troll effectively. He had a legal omilu in his bag and said he was gonna try the inshore, more protected waters.
With the tide rising and the wind and rain getting stronger I decided to whip the oama past the reef before the conditions pushed me back to shore. I didn’t want to deal with double hooking the oama since that tends to make the fish spin and is more prone to getting stuck on the reef, so I was resigned to missing fish that hit the back of the bait. Sure enough, my first oama got shorter on each cast until I just had the head left.
Small omilu and kaku could be seen at the reef’s edge chopping away at my bait and eventually pulling it off. Something pulled my bait down and my hook got stuck. When I popped the line I broke off my 25lb fluoro leader and was too lazy to tie on a new leader so I just slipped on a weight and tied a hook on the 15 lb main fluoro.
I moved away from the bait stealers and cast into a deep channel that separated sections of the reef. I let the bait sit away from the bait stealers patrolling the higher water column and it seemed to drift against the current, toward me. Then the line was pulled into the nearby reef edge. Fish on, but it didn’t feel like much with my drag nearly locked down. The fish was in a small crack in the reef and I could feel my 15 fluro line rubbing. It felt like a big hinalea or roi, and I tried to muscle the fish out of the hole. Out came a bright blue omilu! Instead of running out to sea it swam through the cracks in the reef past me towards shore. I followed it, freeing the line from the rocks. It was like being pulled by a leashed dog, running through shrubbery.
When I caught up with it, the omilu was pretty spent. For a decent sized fish it only had taken out 20 yds of line but those 20 yds were pretty frayed. I hadn’t brought tags with me since tagging in chest deep water was difficult, so my friend took this photo and I bagged the fish. You can see what a gloomy, windy day it was.
I still had defrosted oama with me, so instead of wasting them I went back to the reef edge and the bait stealers found me. After feeding 3 oamas to them with none hooked on the front hook I switched back to the narrow faced top water lure. I was hoping they’d think it was another easy meal and sure enough a kaku swiped at it but missed repeatedly. Maybe the chop was making it too hard for them to locate the bobbing lure? I switched to the oama colored Waxwing Baby and hooked an undersized omilu on the first cast. The bait stealers wised up and I headed in.
Frozen oama was definitely more effective than lures on this blustery day but the bait and switch tactic did work for a while. The omilu measured 16.5″ FL and was close to 4lb. That matches the largest papio I caught inshore last year, also caught on oama. Do you think we can catch fish on the top water lures to rival that size?
I’ve been fishing the top water (floating) and sub-surface (slow sinking) lures a lot, recently. They don’t get hung up in very shallow water and the strikes are often explosive. Whipping these lures doesn’t require much gear, and I’ve been mainly casting from the water’s edge.
The lure bite has slowed dramatically due to the abundance of oama inshore but I still prefer throwing the lures vs. dealing with messy live or dead oama.
The lures in the photo were all manufactured in Japan. Some, like the sub-surface Shimano Waxwings in the bottom row, are sold in the U.S Domestic Market. The others may have been sold in the U.S. at one time but are now only available in the Japan Domestic Market (JDM) in those models or colors.
The 4 light colored ones with green stripes look like they were drawn on because I marked them up to look like oama! The larger Waxwing caught this 16″ white papio (tagged and released) without the bad artwork but I figured it couldn’t hurt to make the lure look like the food the predators are hammering now.
The chubby lure in the 2nd row, left, had been getting hammered by kaku when I threw it in another color scheme before the oama moved in.
The top secret JDM lure in the upper left, has caught omilu and kaku. It’s been so effective that I was asked to never show it online. Sorry. It won’t be in the Best Top Water or Sub-Surface Contest but the other lures will be.
If there’s enough interest I’ll run a poll so you guys can guess which one is deemed the most effective lure.
After missing fish the last few times out, I sharpened the replacement double hook I run on the Waxwing Baby. One of the two hooks had been sliding off my thumb nail. Now it can pierce my nail, ouch.
Jason, the recent fly fishing convert, joined me on this outing as I continued the JDM lure testing. He waded out onto the shallow flat targeting the papio and kaku I was hoping to hook from shore. Normally he targets oio but wanted to add those species to his fly caught list.
Almost immediately he had a kaku on that battled for a while before cutting his fluoro leader. Ugh! It took his streamer fly (I dunno what it’s called) but that gave us hope.
I started with the black/chrome WW, and had a small white follow the lure onto the sand. A little while later I caught this undersized white with the hook that I had just sharpened. Hmm… could it have been the dull hook that was causing all those misses? Too small to tag, it was released.
A few yards down the beach a kaku stopped the WW and hooked up. My first fish I tagged solo. Hmm, I didn’t miss this fish either…
With a fish tagged, I put away my go-to WW and put on a JDM top water lure I’m still getting used to. I tried to “walk the dog” but there was no interest. Dang, and the lure finish looked so realistic.
Next lure up was the top-secret JDM top-water lure that hasn’t failed yet, either inshore or offshore. On the first retrieve something boiled on it but missed. Then I went through a bit of inactivity until I decided to sweep the rod hard to make it gurgle. Slurp… POP! A slightly smaller kaku jumped on and I tagged it. Man, that lure is really magical.
I walked over to small channel and walked-the-dog. Nothing. I was expecting something to rocket out of the water with the secret lure in its mouth. Thinking the predators couldn’t see well in the waning light I made the lure gurgle and pop. A white papio lunged twice but missed the secret lure’s hooks. Hmm… good test for the previous top-water lure now that I know there’s a hungry fish around. I put on the previous lure, gurgled hard and sure enough a white boiled but missed the lure. Maybe it was just too dark to see? It was raining so was a good time to head back.
I caught up with Jason and he said he had hits and misses but hadn’t stuck anything solid after the first kaku. We started heading back but saw some bait near the shore so we gave it a parting shot. Jason hooked something on his popper fly and this one stayed on. Turned out to be a legal white papio, his first on a fly rod! It had a smushed jaw as if it had run into a wall when it was young. Other than that it looked healthy so I tagged it and Jason set it free.
Not a bad first attempt for Jason to target papio and kaku near the shoreline. And the Waxwing’s catch ratio is back up now that it has sticky sharp hooks. I gotta work on that other JDM lure that has yet to catch a fish.