Sportfishing in Sporty Conditions

Yesterday we were sailing downwind going 8 knots surfing backs of waves in 22kn of breeze when I glanced over at the rod and about 5 seconds later it doubled over and the reel started screaming! By the time I put my lifejacket on and clipped in, the fish had already taken about 150 yards of line. I started reeling it in having zero idea what kind of fish it was. After a minute or two I realized it was probably not a Mahi since it probably would have jumped by then. I could tell it was a big fish by my standards.

About three or four minutes in to the fight I swapped reeling it in with my dad, and then after ten more minutes of reeling it popped up on the surface, which means the fight was nearly done. But it was still really far away.

By then I had already made my guess about what kind of fish it was: a Tuna. I thought it was a Tuna because of the tail shakes like I described I felt with the shark. When the fish was about 50 yards behind Flyer I started speculating that it could possibly be a Wahoo or Spanish Mackerel. The closer it got the more I thought it would be a smaller tuna based on how it looked about 25 yards behind Flyer.

I kept reeling it in as quick as possible and I soon realized this definitely was not a tuna, because it was too long. Shortly after that I saw the zebra pattern on its side and realized it was actually a wahoo!

Wahoo have the sharpest teeth of any pelagic fish that people sportfish for. Wahoo are also some of the fastest fish in the ocean. They’re so fast that people will troll for them at around 15 miles per hour, which is called high speed wahoo trolling. We were going fast enough that it made sense that we could catch a wahoo!

We got it close enough to gaffe my dad asked “should we keep this fish?” and I thought it was a no-brainer to keep because wahoo taste really good, and this one was big enough that we could have it for half a week of meals. The first time I’ve ever had wahoo was with my grandparents in Bermuda, and ever since then I’ve wanted to catch wahoo.

Now, the hard part, which was gaffing it. We tried to repeat what we did with the mahi. Dad got the line around the gaffe hook, pulled it close enough, and then grabbed a hold of the line and gaffed it. And then he pulled it up onto the aft deck, and we quickly realized it was one of the coolest if not the coolest looking fish we’ve had on this boat. 

Then we took a ton of photos and figured out how to ike-jime it. If you don’t know what ike-jime is, go back and read my Mahi Mahi post. Then we weighed the fish with a crane scale and it turned out that it weighed 15lbs 10oz. Then we filleted it and everyone had a little bit of sushi. Wahoo is also called Ono in Hawaiian, and you may have had it at a sushi restaurant.

We cut the fillets up and some of them we cooked for dinner. My dad seared it on a pan with fish seasoning that Cameron gave us in Friday Harbor. We had rice, carrots and cabbage with it. It was amazing.

PS: we just had what we think was a 45lb tuna on the rod that practically spooled us. It pulled the hook after we fought it for a really long time.