Outdoors Column | Anglers fish the right spot in Gulf of Mexico, land two big wahoos
When Patrick Bass moved to the Sarasota area 13 years ago he immediately fell in love with fishing deep in the Gulf of Mexico. But unlike most anglers, he’s not out searching just for more commonly targeted reef species like grouper, amberjack and snapper.
“Seventy miles seems to be a real sweet spot,” Bass said. “We look for water temperatures around 70 to 72 degrees in the winter which may be 80 to 90 miles. If it’s a little bit cooler the big fish can handle it. We aim for a good bottom area to start and go from there.”
When the conditions looked just right Bass loaded up his 35-foot Contender with friends Shane Sommer, Jake Sommer and Mike Bleicher for an early 2021 fishing trip to target one of the fastest swimming fish in the Gulf, wahoo.
“I have a spot I call Ark because I mark big pelagics that aren’t amberjack. I troll seven lines with five dedicated to wahoo around 9.5-miles per hour. I know some people troll faster when looking for fish but since we knew where we were going that seems to be a consistent speed. I do small turns so the lures are going in and out of the bubble trails.”
As they passed over Ark the temperature read 69.5 degrees and Bass noticed good looking water. One of the 50-wide reels started screaming. Not long after, a second fish was hooked up. The chaos started as both were big and heading for the horizon.
“The starboard close went off, stripping 25-pounds of drag like it’s nothing. Then the port went off like crazy, and we couldn’t slow down either. The first fish was big and broke the 250-pound leader,” Bass described.
“The second fish ran off nearly 500 feet of the 80-pound line in little time. After about 15 minutes we could see the fish, it was a big wahoo and I saw that the lure was swallowed. We pulled in the last 30 feet as fast as possible and when we gaffed the fish the leader broke as the fish was pulled in the boat. Any longer it probably would have been gone!”
With razor sharp teeth wahoo have little issues cutting through monofilament line. Bass knew he was a little lucky getting that second huge wahoo in the boat. When it hit the deck, that’s when he realized just how big it was.
“It’s head was a big across as a Labrador retriever. I saw that thing and couldn’t believe it, I don’t think they get much bigger out here. On the scale it went 110 pounds!”
The gigantic wahoo was iced down as the crew made another pass, adding a second wahoo that was another quality fish, but almost dwarfed in comparison to the triple-digit-sized fish.
“Wahoo aren’t real shy, they’re a schooling fish. We come right back to the same spot and missed a hit but caught another one. That was our goal, to catch wahoo.”
That goal was accomplished with one of the biggest wahoo the Gulf has produced for a west coast angler.