The action has definitely been a lot slower than in the summer – fall period of 2015.  The most popular reason is that there isn’t much baitfish for the papio to hunt inshore.  So where did all those papio go, and when are they coming back?

Quite a bit of “science” has been gathered by the Ulua and Papio Tagging Project conducted by the Dept of Aquatic Resources (DAR) a few years back.

Based on tag recapture data, the project team was able to determine catch rates across the months of the year, across tidal phases and the phases of the day.  They were also able to track where some of the papio migrated to, and which direction they traveled.  Recapture growth rates showed that the summer bait fish abundance is the time of year the papio bulk up.

Some of that info was consistent with what I had heard before. But there were some pearls of wisdom that surprised me.  Smaller papio fed relatively unaffected by the moon phases but larger ulua definitely followed certain moon phase patterns.  And more papio were caught on the last 1/3 of the rising tide than the middle 1/3.  The first 1/3 of the rising tide was best, as we’ve been hearing.

The DAR Ulua – Papio Tagging Project has ended but there’s some rumblings that another group will be launching an Ulua – Papio Tagging Project in the next few months.  As catch and recapture data accumulates with the new tagging project, even better science will be “discovered”. Hopefully we’ll be able to determine where all the 10″ – 16″ papio are basking in the winter.