Erik, Thad and I waded out to the break on a morning minus tide.  Thad and I were throwing JDM sub-surface lures and Erik started with a small popper. We couldn’t quite make it out to the very edge of the drop off because of the water level and surf but we were still able to fish the deeper channels.  I caught the first fish of the day, a chunky poopa’a that came up for the sub-surface lure as it crossed over the reef edge.

Thad had a 1lb omilu follow his sub-surface lure but it didn’t take it. Things were looking up at this point.  He kept changing lures to see how they’d swim in the wind and chop. Erik changed to a casting jig after losing his popper to a bad FG knot, and started to kick up sand in the deep channel to attract sand dwelling predators. Unfortunately, he found the one pile of rocks on the sand bottom.   After losing the jig he switched to a soft plastic encased nehu patterned lure.

We continued to cover ground but as the tide rose higher we were limited to fishing between the shore and reef break, in waist to chest high water.  Basically the no man’s land where fish just pass through, going from the deep to the shore to feed and return back to the deep.  Thad managed to catch a 3 ft plus trumpetfish in no man’s land that sucked down his tight wiggling, small sub-surface lure. Sorry, I didn’t take a pic because my phone was tucked away in my sling bag.

Spreading out, we approached the shallows from the deep.  I was surprised at the lack of bait fish, which lowered our expectations for action in the knee deep water.  Limu began to snag our hooks but Erik was able to rip his sinking 4 inch 1.2 oz soft nehu on the surface above the limu and hooked something that kicked up a lot of water.  Kaku! Our target species for the shallows.

We weren’t planning on tagging fish because of the deep water we were wading in, but I had a tag kit with me so we tagged it on the beach.  17.75″ FL, good size kaku considering there wasn’t any noticeable bait in the shallows.

With that day saving catch, Erik left for home and Thad and I tried to scrounge up a kaku of our own.  Thad had repeated hits as he walked his surface lure in the 2 ft of water, and I got hits on the sub-surface lure I had fished all day, but nothing stuck. With all the ground we covered we just caught one fish each.

The tide was great, the moon was small but no bait was around.  Are we still between seasons, and the Spring bait influx hasn’t started because we’re in a La Nina cycle and nature is recovering from the strong El Nino cycle?