out of season papio

The waves on the South Shore were down and the winds were very light this morning.  I decided to check my deeper water spot that’s normally exposed to surf and wind.  I hadn’t trolled oamas there in 2 months and I wasn’t expecting much after blanking at my other trolling spots.  I still had a few oamas left in my tubs at home and it was really hard to take my pets out to use as bait.

The first live oama went untouched for an hour until a lizard fish somehow hooked itself on the back hook while the oama still dangled on the front hook.  You would think an oama followed by a lizard fish would make an excellent presentation but nothing wanted them.

I replaced the two with a  lively 5 inch oama and continued paddling around on my longboard.  30 minutes passed. The last two times I had trolled here, all the baits were hit within 10 minutes.  I guess the epic oama season of 2014 finally came to an end.

I headed in, staying on the reef edge of the channel and my ratchet went off.  The strike was completely unexpected and the fish felt very strong. I felt the line rubbing on the reef off and on and tried to paddle over to free it.  Once it came free I buttoned down the drag and the fish came in fairly quickly, having spent most of its energy on the early runs.  For some reason the 14 inch papio fought so much harder then the others caught during the oama season.  Maybe it was upset that it fell for the out of season oama.

My take on all this is that the predators aren’t looking for oama anymore but if they happen to stumble upon one they’ll still eat it.

There was finally a break in the weather before Tropical Storm Ana is expected to hit Oahu in 3 days.  The barometer was falling this morning which generally isn’t good.  Since the weather is expected to be rainy days after the storm hits, I decided to take some big oamas and troll while the trolling was good.

I started with a 5 inch oama and it went untouched until I found a small sand pocket in the break.  A 14 inch papio hit the back hook and I worked to bring it in before drifting into the surf zone.  Not the bigger papio I was hoping for.  I put on another 5 inch oama and before I reached that deep sand pocket a 13.5 inch papio hit.  This one swallowed the back hook deep and when I unhooked it with my long nose pliers it coughed up blood so I had to keep it.  Shucks, my plan was to let go the small papios for the remainder of the season.

I put on a moose oama caught earlier this week, to deter the smaller papio.  Well I didn’t get any more papio bites but the aha, kaku and pipe fish all tried to take down the moose.  They sliced and diced a couple of the moose but couldn’t turn them lengthwise to get hooked.  Maybe 6 inch plus oama are too large for inshore reef trolling?

I’m not sure if the fish felt the falling barometric pressure and bit before the storm, or just ate normally.  I hadn’t trolled this location for a few weeks, and after last week’s too warm conditions at my other spot, it was good to know this spot still produces.

papio soup and sashimi

The deep hooked 13.5 inch papio was much appreciated.  My friend Dean’s mom made the traditional Japanese meal of sashimi and fish head soup. Oishii!

Hoping to build on last week’s catch, I was chomping at the bit to get back to the spot.  I first needed to restock my oama supplies and then had to wait for the brown water to clear.  In the meantime the days with higher tides passed and I was debating whether to go out on an afternoon high tide of only 1.6 feet.  Decided that worst case, I’d find out what happens on a relatively small afternoon tide.

The afternoon sun, combined with humidity and light winds, had heated the water to hot tub temperatures.  The predators were either absent or sluggish.  Without a lot of new, cold water coming in with the rising tide, I just registered some weak strikes that pulled off the oamas, left me a body-less head, and mauled my last bait.  I’m theorizing that the predators didn’t have the energy to slam the baits hard enough to get hooked properly.

oama left side

This last oama was alive and swimming strongly over a shallow reef when something came up and chomped down on it sideways.

oama right side

The fish didn’t really run with the bait, it just held it in its mouth until I lifted the rod.

oama top view

Look how deep the wound is behind the head.  The culprit could be the body snatcher that’s been leaving me with oama heads.  I didn’t see the splash of an aha (giant needlefish) but it was in the location where baits have been mauled by aha. Does this look like an aha bite?

Lesson learned:  During this unusually warm fall season, either fish days with a morning high tide, or days where the afternoon tide is close to 2 feet.

will this be the last of the season? (11″ pliers)

I was fearing the worst after the last two failed attempts to catch a keeper papio on a trolled oama.  Thinking the season was over, I took a couple mid-sized oama, and 4 emaciated ones that failed to gain weight in captivity.  Figured I may as well set them free if nothing was biting.  As the ultimate test I trolled my most productive spot.

The bite definitely wasn’t red hot, but I did land a hard fighting 14 inch omilu in front of the surf zone and had another strong strike come off.  I was down to the emaciated oama whose bodies were narrower than their heads.  2 trumpet fish and two small papio liked the looks of those appetizers and got hooked.

papio sushi

My friend Dean, a former sushi chef, turned the papio into this beautiful sushi platter.  The brown maki sushi in the middle row are a papio poke mixture, and the light colored maki sushi were made from the papio filet.  It’s amazing what some people can do with a fresh caught fish.

Guess the season isn’t over yet.  I plan to take the remaining jumbo oama out for a swim at another spot I’ve been letting rest.  Click here to see how I did.

double hook trolling setup

The surf wasn’t as large as forecast so I went back to the spot I fished last week to see if I could find a bruiser papio amongst the barely legal ones.  5 oamas that I was medicating for ich died this morning so I took them along since they shouldn’t be consumed.  With the 5 live ones, that made an even 10, much more than I normally take.

I paddled out to the start of the surf break and within a couple minutes I had a strike on a live oama that ended up cutting off the back hook.  Dang kaku!  Instead of wasting another live one I put out a fresh dead one and gave it 10 minutes to produce.  Since I hadn’t caught anything on dead oama this year I wasn’t expecting much and checked my watch as I paddled around.  4 minutes later a 15 inch lai (leatherback jack) was hooked on the back hook.  Not the big papio I was looking for but I was pleased that the dead bait worked. I put out another dead bait and 3 minutes later an undersized papio was hooked on the back hook.  Still not the big papio I wanted so I put a live oama on and paddled parallel to the break.  I checked the time and within 5 minutes a very small papio pulled the oama off the two hooks.  Ugh… down to 3 live ones left I put another dead one on and this time a papio about the same size as the oama was hooked on the back hook!

And so it went, whether dead or alive, all the strikes occurred within 5 minutes of the bait hitting the water.  All hit the back hook and a few keeper papio swallowed the hook deep where I had to use longnose pliers to pull it out of their gills. I’m using a pretty large Owner Ebi Baitholder hook as the back hook in the hopes that the long shank would prevent the kaku from biting through the line (please see pic).  Yet the bigger fish are taking the hook deep as they inhale the oama tail first.  That hook is almost too big to use on the tail of the oama and it definitely impedes the oama’s swimming ability.

Maybe I should try a circle hook and risk lowering my hookup ratio?

While all the dead oama got hit, the larger papio hit the live ones.  I decided I’ve kept enough barely legal papios for now so all the fish were released.