Fish Stories - Humongous Omilu

This is NOT a fly-fishing story. It will be quite short because everything happened so fast...

Randy, Chad and I decided to go spinning this past Sunday, March 29, 2009. The day turned out to be rather cloudy and windy and the fishing was slow. Not a hint of a fish at Black Buoy. Same story at Blinking Buoy. Chad caught a barracuda at Neck and I got cut off when a barracuda bit through my main line (Randy and Chad “theorized” that I must have had a nick in my line and got cut off when the fish pulled - NOT!).

Then, Randy caught a barracuda on Kipapa Flats. I motored Omilu Edge, hoping for some barracuda action, but all we saw was one papio chase. As the evening approached, we were hopeful that we would find one of the schools of white papio that usually appear every spring. We tried Breakers - nothing. Next, we tried Three Poles (aka “Old” Buoy 12). Nothing on the front edge so we drifted down the right edge. About halfway down, a large explosion erupted behind my Spit’n Image plug as I retrieved it off of the reef into the deep. Fish on!!

The wind was pushing the boat towards the reef so Randy and Chad asked if they should start the motor. I estimated the fish at around five pounds so I said, “Nah, I think I’m OK.” (I was using my “big game” outfit: 8’3” Fenwick HMG rod, Team Daiwa Advantage 4000A reel spooled with 150 yards of Gamma 17 lb. co-polymer line, and a Heddon Excalibur Spit’n Image outfitted with stronger split rings and treble hooks.) As the boat drifted nearer to the edge, a sliver of concern crept into my mind so I applied heavy pressure on the fish. In spite of my very tight drag, the fish was able to make a few, albeit short, runs. Maybe this fish was bigger than five pounds... Now, the boat was almost to the reef edge so Chad raised the motor to improve the drift angle. I was confident that the line would hold as long as the fish did not make it into the coral so I pumped even harder. The fish finally approached the surface and Randy exclaimed, “Wow, that fish is huge!” Chad grabbed the net and scooped for the fish; it saw the net and made a quick, short run out of Chad’s reach. On the next attempt, I raised the rod to lift the fish’s head out of the water and guided it into the net. As Chad struggled to lift the fish into the boat, we all gasped at the size of the humongous Omilu. After a moment of reflection, we realized that the blue beast had been landed exceedingly quickly; the general consensus was that the fight had lasted approximately two minutes! Yes, two (2) minutes! Thankfully, the fish had hit the “big game” outfit. We figured it probably would have cut off if it had hit one of the other lines (Randy and Chad were using their standard setups with 7’ rods and 10 lb. test line.) Back at the dock, the fish weighed in at 12 lb. 12 oz.