Winter wahoo fishing is heating up
No matter how long you fish there are always going to be days that you just have to shake your head in wonder. I had one of those days on Tuesday everything I thought would work didn’t and everything I thought wouldn’t work did. The late season billfish bite didn’t pan out as the bait left the rig and was replaced by sharks. The first bite on a live mullet rigged on 100lb fluro turned out to be a fairly good sized shark. That had the ability to change species five or six times in the fight. The water just had enough green tint to make a positive ID tough. With a good amount of tuna marking on the sounder I dropped a seven seas hooker jig down just to see what was home. It didn’t make it very deep and I missed the fish. So a couple of jig rods went down and up came a yellowfin and a nice blackfin
A few more drifts through the area the fish were showing at and nothing. My next plan of attcak was to target the wahoo. On the way to where I was going to start wahoo fishing I had a premanition or how ever you spell it. I made a turn to go to a totaly new area. The goal was for tuna and wahoo wasn’t exactly what my crew had came for. Upon arrival the smaller yellows and blacks were doing thier thing on the surface with a few bigger busts from larger fish. So out go the mullet only to find more large sharks. This time they were extra large hammerheads. With our live mullet only attracting sharks we broke back out the jigging gear. And went to putting a hurting on the blackfin and yellowfin. We shut it down after a reasonable amount of tuna in th box. The call was made to see if we could find some AJ’s on jigging gear. A naked jig didn’t work but a ghetto jig did with a strip of tuna hanging off of it worked like a charm. My jigs went fishless while the strip jig combo got hammered and quick limit of slightly above average jacks went into the box. The final susprise of the day was a tuna that was in the wrong place hanging out with the AJ’s after 45 mintues on a Accurate 20 spinning reel with 65lb braid everyone was thinking huge AJ but it just didn’t fight like one. So up pops a 90lb yellowfin in some very green and pretty shallow water. We ended the day with 5 yellows to 90 and 6 blacks along with a limit of nice AJ’s. The next three days the weather was susposed to be horrible but the weather man was wrong. In a way that they are never wrong the weather was a little foggy but very calm. The first day I tried the lump with no love at all except for sharks and more sharks than a few more sharks for good measure. The saving grace was dinner was caught in the form of some triggerfish and b-liner snapper. The next day I loaded the wahoo lures to go in search of them with the lack of tuna on the lump. The first rig we hit on the first pass was perfect three knockdowns. Out of that we only managed one wahoo in the 50lb range one broken lure on the strike and one cut off. From there it went not so good. We would get bites on just about every other rig only to lose the fish every time. If it wasn’t a wahoo the hooks stuck like supperglue to them. It was a pretty demorilizing day to only have one wahoo for all the bites we had. The next day started out slow on the wahoo troll again. But it quickly heated up for us with a double and both of them made it to the boat. Then a thrid was hooked reeling in another bait during the double. We were not doing anything different that we didn’t do yesterday except land the fish. The highlight of the day was a wahoo that was later weighed in at 92lbs. back at Crypress Cove. We ended the day doing some AJ jigging it was fun watching thier faces when a big AJ would eat thier jig. We ended the day with a ethical 9 wahoo to 92lbs and a blackfin. he last trip from this series was of course another wahoo trip but the area that they have been holding in well the word got out and there was more boats out there than the boat show. We doubled up on blackfin on the first pass by a spot that was a gift from hurricane katrina. After that it was three boats on every rig so we went jack fishing. Sometimes you just have to make it happen no matter the target species is. We ended the day with our limit of nice jacks and two blackfin. The stories the guys got from the jacks was worth it. It is pretty cool to watch one guy with the rod and two others holdig onto the guy with the rod. There are no pictures since I left my camera at the house. Hopefully everyone will send them to me. Until next time catch’em up.
Capt. Mike
