Erik and I fished one of our test grounds during the middle of the day, on the last 1/3 of the big rising tide. We didn’t expect a lot of action because of increased visibility and choppy conditions but hoped for the best.

I started with lure #2 in the picture above. Erik used a more traditional, rounder popper. Our poppers didn’t generate any follows for either of us so I changed to the narrow faced top water lure (#4).  The pattern I used kind of looks like a narrow faced raccoon, in a fishy kind of way.  It’s such a unique looking lure with a unique swimming action.  It dips and bobs like a bait fish flipping and diving in the water.  I threw it past a shallow reef shelf and when I retrieved it onto the shelf it looked like a patch of white sand was stirred up.  The patch followed the lure as it dipped and squirted, and I realized it was a huge white colored fish!  White ulua?  But it was long and cylindrical. Turned out to be the largest oio I had ever seen free swimming and it was very interested in the lure.  It then bumped the lure, realized it wasn’t edible and swam off disappointed. So was I.

I told Erik what happened and he put on a soft sided lure that resembled a large nehu or a slim sardine.  On my next cast a 3/4 lb omilu came over the reef shelf to follow my lure but turned away.  The fish were getting too good a look at our fake offerings.

We worked our way down the beach and Erik’s nehu lure attracted the attention of kaku and aha.  We both missed fish so I changed to the Waxwing Boy (lure #5) that I could retrieve  faster, and hopefully give the fish less opportunity to scrutinize it.  Eventually I hooked a good size kaku that was followed by two others.  It shook the hook off before I could land it.

Erik changed to a narrow stick bait that looked like a small mullet, and got follows and a blowup but no hookup.  I put the narrow racoon-faced top water back on and got a lot of kaku follows but no hits until I paused to let it sit and a kaku jumped out of the water to hit it but missed the hook!

In short, we got a lot of follows and hits but didn’t land a single fish.  Curse of the mid-day sun?