How two Sarasota anglers caught a giant 120-pound wahoo in the Gulf of Mexico

When Robert Reynolds planned an offshore trip with friend Cody Moss, he told Moss it might not be the most exciting day out.

“I told him we were going to troll for wahoo and wahoo only. It’s not for everyone but he was confident in it,” Reynolds said.

“You have to commit to fishing for them. There’s really not much else you will catch when doing it right. I’ve been pretty good at getting fish in the 50 to 90 pound range, but my goal has always been a 100 pound fish coming from the Gulf of Mexico.”

Reynolds credits friend and captain Marty Bordas out of Sarasota for sharing knowledge of catching pelagics in the Gulf. Bordas first taught him how to target blackfin tuna. From there the friendship grew into targeting wahoo.

“It became fun and a bigger challenge to get that big wahoo. Two years ago, we had a school of blackfin tuna around the boat and we were quadded up using poppers. I was up on the bow and my buddy said ‘look, there’s a Mako (shark)!’” explained Reynolds.

“It was about 8 feet long and huge. When it turned sideways you could see stripes and I saw it was a wahoo. That fish had to be about 150 pounds and stayed around the boat but wouldn’t eat anything.”

With calm weather, Reynolds and Moss set out on a mild winter morning at 6 a.m. Their first stop was 70 miles out where they deployed a five-line trolling spread at 8:30 a.m. that included cedar plugs, ballyhoo and Nomad lures.

Hours of trolling had the day looking like a bust, but Reynolds stuck with his plan.

“I look for structure with bait. It could be a spring, a ledge or rock pile. If there’s life and bait on the surface that’s a plus.”

At 1:30 in the afternoon, the purr of the engines and sounds of water slapping below the boat was broken by screaming drag. Not just one or two but three rods starting singing all at once. Reynolds kept the boat in gear which is normally done to swim the wahoo back to the boat.

“One fish broke off after it swallowed a cedar plug, and Cody started cranking on the smaller of the two fish. I knew the other was bigger because it kept running and running. Normally it’s 30 seconds and then they stop but this kept going, it wouldn’t stop. The smaller fish was probably 50 pounds and we ski’d it in the boat so we could focus on the bigger one. That’s the one we wanted.”

Reynolds and Moss took turns fighting the speedster that took nearly all the 1000 yards of line off the Talica 50 reel. After 40 minutes of back and forth the fish was finally coming close.

“At 100 yards out, after slowly dragging it in, the rod went up in the air and the line went slack. I thought he was gone. I was pissed. But I looked starboard and I see neon yellow braid going by us. He swam all the way past the boat, then in the engines so we had to turn fast to keep him on.”

The beast was finally within sight, and Reynolds saw a tail break the surface. It was 6 inches wide and bigger than any wahoo he had ever seen, making him think they had a shark. But as it came closer it was the fish he had been dreaming of, a giant wahoo.

“I was driving and on the rod. It finally got close enough and Cody sunk the first gaff into him. He couldn’t lift it over. I put the rod down and the boat in neutral and grabbed a second gaff. It took two or three tries to lift his big ass over!”

Reynolds knew the fish was a giant, and his biggest to date. To get a picture they had to set a camera on a bean bag and attempt to hold it up while the timer counted down before eventually hanging it from the T-Top.

This caused another issue when a spine from the giant ended up in his hand.

“A few days after my left finger started to swell up, it was infected. I felt it stick in me, but like any other fishing day I ended up with 6 holes in my hand so didn’t think much of it at the time.”

But for Reynolds it was worth it. They arrived back to the dock at 5:30 in the evening and weighed the giant the next day.

At 120 pounds it was years of effort coming together and a goal accomplished.