Skunked Hard - Lots of Fish Around

I took Marlon and Noe out this morning as the solunar table indicated it would be an active fishing day.  We saw lots of fish - barracuda, surgeonfish, oama, nehu, papio and others - but Marlon was using flies and I was using a kastmaster and grubs - so in a word we got "skunked".

But it was a great morning to be out on the water and Marlon was trying out the flyrod I recently got for him -

Fun morning (even if w didn't catch any fish)!!!

Caught a Bunch of Rocks

No kidding -

I ended up pulling up three like this.

Here's a close up of the fly I had tied on (to the end of a whipping rig - not a fly line).

I tied this clouser to mimic these fish - oama

I need to go fishing for these guys specifically next time

Fishing with Noe Again

Marlon was still on his trip to Molokai on July 4th, so I brought Noe out to try and catch some oama that we had seen on the previous fishing trip. The oama were not there...

 

 We found a beached sea urchin (hawa'e)

 

And I cast out a kastmaster hoping to hook up with something (besides seaweed). Skunked again - OH WELL - that's why it's called fishing...

Getting Ready...

With Spring firmly entrenched in the Northern Hemisphere, it is only a matter of time before the oama start coming in to the shallows. And behind them will be the predators that need to fatten up on oama. I was stuck in town the other day (really bad westbound traffic) - so I thought I stop off at Charlie's Fishing Supply. I ended up buying some yellow crystal flash that is close to the color of the oama back. Here's a Clouser tied up with the new crystal flash. I also tied up another orange fly... just because... I need to get out and tie these on (maybe Saturday morning???).

Oama Clouser Minnow

I tied this up to entice fish that typically eat oama (young of the year Yellow Stripe Goatfish). Unfortunately I haven't enticed any fish.

The Kiddoroosters and I Went Fishing

I'll say this up front - it is getting harder to consistently blog. The commute back and forth from work during the week is sucking the life out of me, and keeping up with chores and errands comes first. I'll strive to do better, but for now forgive the late posting. I took the kids fishing on the flats this past Saturday while La was at a quilting class. We saw some cool fish I hadn't seen out there before like pipefish and some baby coronetfish - good eye Marlon! I also hooked up to a kaku on the first cast (my Kaku Candy flies need to be renamed to Kaku Crack). And we tried to catch some oama - but the rods we brought were rather short (as we came to learn). The oama holes I had found last year were not holding this time around, but the kids had fun anyways. We'll try again next weekend.

Look Who I Went Fishing With!!!

One of my former employees from Diego Garcia was in town! Dante was one of the first guys to show me where the good fishing spots were and most notably, he showed me how to prepare bonefish (of which I made lots of fish lumpia). Check out the posts from 2011 to 2012 and he should be in a few of the pictures. So what to do with a person who you've gone fishing with before??? Take him fishing of course!!! I picked up Dante from b=his hotel and we were on the flats within 30 minutes, right around the bottom of the low tide. I hooked up with a decent sized roi (peacock grouper) on one of my first casts. Dante got a good sized papio (talakitok in tagalog) for his first. From there we both caught other fish - saddle wrasses, a snapper, a hawkfish (first one I caught out here I think - chubby guy!!!), papio and Dante caught the Hawaiian State Fish - humuhumunukunukuapua'a While fishing for oama I caught one of the smallest fish I've caught on a hook (size 20 limerick) - another Sergeant Major. When the kids get out here, it'll be fun to raise a few of these in an aquarium. I also got a picture of an oama - I had a great time fishing with an old friend!

Saturday's Catching

I hit the flats a little later on Saturday. The low tide was supposed to be at 10 am so I took my time getting out of bed. The wind was up so I opted to go fishing with shrimp. What I was really working on was keeping the shrimp legs and using them to try catching o'ama (young of the year Yellow Stripe Goatfish). I started off with this bluefin trevally. Then I saw a bunch of guys show up to fish for the o'ama, so I put the spin gear away and set out to try my hand at catching these small fish. Small hook, shrimp legs as bait and BAM! These sergeant majors wouldn't leave me alone!!! I did finally catch a few oama, but they are even more thrashy than their older counterparts. I wasn't able to get a picture - once I had the camera ready the fish had found their way back to the water.