With no break in the trade winds, and gear to test, I grudgingly headed to the Westside. Not my favorite destination since it gets fished a lot and the traffic going home can be brutal in the afternoon. But with school out for the summer, the early morning drive was smooth sailing. I was meeting Lawrence on the water and he already had an 19lb ono in his fish bag before I had even left home!

He had gotten some akule before the sun came up, and the opelu didn’t bite for him so I knew I would have a hard time catching bait. My game plan was just to learn the shallow bottom fish grounds and hopefully catch some keeper sized good eating fish on the damashi and small jig.

I started with new red VMC offset Octopus hooks and 13 Fishing soft plastics infused with amino acids/protein, along with my standby CHL Minnows. I liked the way the Octopus hook hung straight down on the branch line because of the bend near the eye of the hook but was leery about the offset hook deep hooking the fish.

Found some fish marks near the bottom but nothing bit the baits for a long time. Began to wonder if the 13 Fishing plastic was scaring the fish!

Then I felt small fish hitting the lures and coming off, and eventually deep hooked a small nabeta that was hard to unhook. I was not loving the new hooks and the 13 Fishing soft plastic wasn’t getting bit any better than the CHL Minnows. The bite continued to be slow and I landed a kawalea (Heller’s barracuda) whose buddies broke off the other hooks so I changed to a 15lb damashi rig with the normal gold Maruto MZ hooks.

Lawrence was far away, out of radio range, so he called me on my cell to tell me he was hooked up to something BIG and was getting towed out to sea. 25 minutes into the fight, he was about to get spooled so he tightened his drag and the fish broke off. He ended up in 700ft of water and cranked up the Newport 300 motor on his Hobie Outback to get back in. He believes it was a legit ahi (yellowfin over 100lb) that he couldn’t stop on his Avet LX Raptor.

I stumbled upon a keeper nabeta and tried to get more to make a meal but failed. Then my damashi rig got mauled and I brought up an odd looking small kahala. I had a feeling it was an almaco jack, the fish they farm in Kona and call Kampachi, and thought about keeping it but let the 1lb fish go.

At home I looked up how to tell the difference between an almaco and greater amberjack. The almaco’s eyes are further back than the end of the jaw, whereas the greater amberjack’s eye are right above the end of its jaw. This was an almaco.

I figured I’d hook a bunch on the tungsten jig but as I swung the jig back to cast, it hit my paddle and the reel backlashed badly. Somehow I sliced my thumb in the process and by the time I got a band aid on to stop the bleeding I lost the school. 🙁

Lawrence met me and we headed in. The paddle back in was short and uneventful but dealing with the sloped sandy beach was brutal. The asphalt pavement was so hot I got burnt through my surf booties. You gotta be rugged to survive on this side of the island!

This was my 3rd time on the Westside and I still haven’t figured it out. There definitely are big fish if you have live bait, and shallow bottom fish if you get them when they are feeding, or have better bait than I did. I’ll give the VMC Octopus hooks and 13 Fishing lures another chance over hungrier fish before giving up on them. Traffic going home was much better than when I had done that during school season.

With only 1 nabeta I didn’t want to deal with deep frying the fish on a propane stove so I ended up scaling, gutting and removing the center bone so my sister could steam it for my dad. Her cats made quick work of the meat left on that bone. I wasn’t used to how flexible the Rapala Fish Pro fillet knife was so I had to learn to trust that it could actually cut through the bone. It was nice that the thin blade allowed me to cut so close to the bone and not waste meat. Finally, one of the new products worked as hoped!