May '00
Well I have just returned from my 16-day trip on the Polaris Supreme and
I want to first thank Tommy Rothery and the crew of the Polaris Supreme for an enjoyable stay at the Revilla-gigeddos Islands. Many of you have
checked their web site: Polaris Supreme and saw our updates on this
trip. I would like to add an insight on the wahoo fishing this month.
The readers of the Fish Sniffer know that wahoo fishing is my passion.
On this trip it still held true. Sure there were chances to catch a cow tuna, I even hooked a couple of decent tuna but I crave the ‘hoos. This
time the wahoo were very selective on what they bit. That made it all the more fun for me.
When the ‘hoos are biting every thing in sight it is fun, don’t get me wrong. But when they are finicky it is fun and challenging. That’s
what I like. There is a line in a song that goes “why do we want something we can’t have?” That’s my life in a nutshell including
fishing. I will spend hours trying to get that finicky wahoo to bite. And on this trip I did.
My grand total of wahoo landed for 9 days of fishing was 6. I hooked
one wahoo on a bomb and one on the troll the last morning at San Benedicto Island and the other 4 took most of the trip to catch. Why
you ask. Well they had to be convinced that my sardine was the one to bite. So how you do convince a wahoo to eat something when they are full. You
have to make it so tempting that you trigger their most basic instinct. You appeal to their predator instinct. Most predators, no matter how
stuffed they are cannot refuse one more bite. For wahoo it’s a lively sardine swimming for its life. Sounds easy but it is not.
As boat after boat pounds an area for wahoo they get lockjaw. They get very selective of what they want to eat. The “dumb” ones have already
made their mistake and are sitting in the whole of a long range boat.
So getting the smart ones to bite takes a change in normal tactics of
wahoo. Forget everything you hear in the long range articles about 4/0 or 6/0 hooks and 40 or 60 lb. wire leaders. Go light tackle. Reduce
your line and leader size and you will increase your hook up ratio. How light? Well Dr. Steve went down to 8 lb. mono and 14 lb. single
strand wire. Did it improve his hook up ratio? Yes it did. Did it improve his catch ratio? Just barely. Would I recommend this? In most
cases no, but Dr. Steve has hundreds of days on a long range under his belt. He also picked his spots to fish the light tackle. During the
slow times in the afternoon while the tuna shunned the boat, Dr. Steve
brought out the light gear. It was Dr. Steve, the British long rangers and myself only at the rail and we all were trying to hook one of those
finicky wahoo.
After the first day the four of us realized that the wahoo had lockjaw. So we started to try lighter tackle and after a day of trying different gear we found a happy medium from the regular tackle and the extra light stuff. Flylinning a lively sardine with 25 lb. mono and 27 lb. wire worked the best. One of the British born long ranger was the hot stick. I only had 32 lb. wire and even using a slightly heavier wire made a difference. Roy landed 12 wahoo while I only 4. So even Mr. Ono learned a thing on this trip. Don’t forget the light wire.