Early morning top water papio frenzy!

June 20, 2018 By Scott 9 Comments

Capt Erik (referred to as “Erik” when I’m not on his boat!) had been experiencing some great outings in the bay, getting the schooling white papio (GTs) and awa awa to frenzy on his poppers. In fact, he hooked a 100 lb plus ulua on a Micky Mouse popper he bought from Bass Pro Shops near Disney World! That true story of the epic 2 hr battle will be reported here if you guys ask him nicely. 🙂

He knew I was struggling to get a decent fish to test the 13 Fishing Concept Z reel so he invited me out on his 14’ aluminum Lowe boat with Yamaha 9.9hp tiller motor, and picked a not-so-early morning start time because he was well aware of my aversion to early mornings. We reached the first spot at 8:30am and he hooked a big white papio on his 4th cast. The fish was too strong to be horsed in and got sharked, and Capt Erik ended up feeling the long runs of the shark. After a couple mins the lure popped free and as he cranked it back in, and it got hit! A smaller white was quickly brought in and released unscathed. The bite ended and we went looking all over the place. We even trolled but couldn’t find the school until Capt Erik called up another white from the depths a few hrs later with his popper. At the end I got a couple sub-7 inch whites in the shallows as consolation bites.

Capt Erik felt sorry for my lack of production so he invited me out again a few days later, for a true dawn patrol trip. This would be testing the theory that the school bites better in the early morning independent of tidal movement since the tide was flat. I woke at 3:30am, which is closer to when I normally go to sleep than when I wake up, and we were fishing at 5:45. He got bit on the 4th cast of his small 7/8 oz Yozuri Hydro Popper again, and tagged a 14.5″ white papio with PIFG tag #A5646.

We both were silently thinking that the bite would stop after that, but the school stayed and I managed to call a 17 inch white up with a JDM popper that I can pop just by line retrieval, not rod sweeps. I tagged that with #A5652.

We moved to the area that had been most productive for Capt Erik in the past, and once again he got them to frenzy on his Hydro Popper. He kept his white papio in the water to keep the school close, and I cast a heavy 1.5 oz JDM sinking swimmer I had never used before. It was the larger version of this 1 oz sinking swimmer that a big omilu hit.

It got boiled on, and the fish took line on a hard drag on the Tranx 400. No head shakes, it felt like a really good fish and I was imagining it to be a non-jumping big awa awa, or even a shibi! But soon enough it got sharked too and my brand new JDM lure was gone.

Capt Erik hooked up again and got the papio in the boat before it could get sharked. It looked like a white papio but the eyes were larger and the body was narrower. Menpachi papio! I had never seen one before. The fish were frenzying and my line on my big pole was cut. I looked at the Z reel and told it this was its chance to prove itself. The JDM popper got boiled on 3 times and I was on! I couldn’t horse the fish in with the small reel, and was pretty sure it was gonna get sharked but with the Captain’s encouragement I got it boatside and he netted it. 17 inch whitey. The little Z reel with 22lb max drag did the job. Stay tuned for the in-depth review. We had 3 papio flopping around in the boat, released the 2 whites and I asked Capt Erik if I could take the menpachi papio home for my parents.

The bite stopped so we trolled around and ended up further out, over a deep reef. Capt Erik was able to get a big boil on his GT Ice Cream plug but it didn’t stick. Our 4 hrs of early morning fishing were up and it was time to race in. I begrudgingly have to say that the schooling predators bite better at sun up than mid morning, and they seem to shut off just a couple of hours into the day.

The 14.5 inch menpachi papio had a semi-digested fish in its stomach and was riddled with worms the size of “orzo” pasta throughout its stomach cavity. I’ll spare you guys that view. The flesh was reddish, unlike omilu and papio, and I presented it to my dad worm-free. He fried and broiled it and said it tasted a little better than the more common papio. Maybe it was oilier? Thanks Capt Erik for ensuring I’d be able to test the Z reel against hard pulling fish by calling the school right to me, and sharing the rare menpachi papio with my family.

Top water action and inaction on East and South side

October 6, 2016 By Scott 1 Comment

On a day when the wind was blowing 10 – 15 mph, Erik fished his top water lures on the East side and I stuck to the South side. Erik pointed his aluminum skiff to the deeper water and I started board fishing at the break.

Nothing was showing for Erik as he trolled the outside so he worked his way back in. He didn’t get any boils on his trusty popper but his fishy sense was going off. He changed to the translucent pencil lure from our previous top water outing to practice retrieving it. Suddenly the lure got sucked down and his light action rod bent over. After a spirited tousle, he landed a foul hooked omilu. It had taken the front hook in the corner of its mouth and the rear hook snagged its chin. No wonder it felt much larger than the 11.5 inches (FL) he measured before tagging and releasing.

He moved to a nearby spot and a pack of omilu rushed his lure. As he brought in another foul hooked fish, 2 others tried to rip the lure away. This one was 12 inches and he tagged and released it back to its buddies. I was impressed when I heard how he was able to fool the omilu which often rush top water lures only to swirl and swim away unhooked. I have yet to catch an omilu on a top water lure.

Erik had another omilu shake off, then missed something very large that threw a lot of water. He finished the day at the edge of the murky water with an 7 to 8lb kaku zig zagging behind his lure and kicking up spray but not slicing into his plastic bait.

Meanwhile, nothing showed interest in my new narrow faced top water lure that replaced the raccoon faced lure lost to a kaku the other day. I board fished a channel break that had been previously productive when I used frozen oama. The wind chopped up the water so I paddled in to fish from shore. Bait was missing from the usual spots and I didn’t get any boils as I walked the shoreline. Then I saw small baitfish erupting out of the water and falling back like heavy rain drops. My first cast near the eruption yielded a very small kaku, maybe 12 inches, too small to tag. Nothing hit my next few casts so I changed to a few other top water lures I wanted to test, and even tried a Waxwing Baby. Nothing. I switched back to the new raccoon faced lure and had two boils as the sun set. Later, when I washed down the lure I realized the last two fish had actually scratched up the lure but missed the hooks.

I think the narrow profile of this lure looked enough like the baitfish to draw strikes, whereas the other lures I tried were fuller bodied.

And I think Erik has mastered the chubby pencil lure and we need to get video of that monster kaku attacking his lure.

More misses than hookups on the Top Water lures

September 22, 2016 By Scott 6 Comments

Top water plug fishing has become my favorite fishing technique of late. There are a lot of shoreline spots that host papio and kaku ready to jump a bobbing, slurping lure. Even if the water is only a foot or so deep, the lures float and don’t get hung up. With a 25lb fluoro leader, I haven’t been cut off by kaku yet.

Sounds like an ideal fishing method huh? Well, the top water hookup ratio is notoriously low. The fish either hit the lure body but miss the hooks or get suspicious and veer off at the last millisecond.

There are recommended times to fish top water, and some lures are designed to have better hookup ratios than others.

Fish seem to hit top water lures better when the sun angle is low. Dawn or dusk. The fish may be more easily fooled in the low light, or they don’t like looking up into the bright sky to feed. When the sun is overhead I often get weak attempts to pull the lure down.

This lure shape has always attracted fish but often the fish splash next to it a few times and become disinterested. Maybe it’s because the body is so fat that the fish are blocked from the hooks? Look at the scratches on its back, opposite side of where the hooks are. To be fair, most of the attackers are kaku trying to slice off the back end of the lure. If they were decent sized papios they probably would’ve wolfed the whole lure down.

When I miss fish with the chubby lure above I switch to this narrower, bobbing lure. It misses fish too, but eventually hooks one.

Maybe the fish’s jaws are wrapping around the slender body better and eventually finding a hook? Both lures are sold out of Japan and this narrow faced lure is especially hard to find. The model I’m fishing is really a freshwater bass lure that I’ve been putting saltwater hooks on. Look at what it attracted in the past.

This kaku hit an hr before dark. I pinch down the barbs of the hooks so I can tag and release the fish with minimal harm.

And this kaku kept missing my hooks but was hooked by Clay’s lure. Clay employs a much faster retrieve that gets the kaku to commit. I’ve been trying to learn that retrieve. The last time out I walked my lure back quickly and when I was about to lift the lure out of the water a white papio took a swipe and missed the hooks.

Mores misses than hookups but a very exciting way to fish.