Well this is kind of an old report I meant to write up a while ago but I have been busy. A few weeks ago I got big wahoo, by far the biggest I have shot.
This winter has been truly awesome fishing for me in terms of trophy fish, not sure how much longer my luck will hold up.
I went out with Ben Choi and Vlad, it was probably one of the best days for wahoo this season. Overall this season has been terrible compared to last year. I have not been diving long enough to see a pattern in wahoo fishing. By my records 2014 was off the hook, 2013 and 2012 where ok, and 2011 was off the hook as well. 2015 has not been great.
Anyways we are drifting for wahoo and I missed a nice one in the morning. Although that sucked, seeing a nice fish always helps keep me going when I am not seeing anything for hours.
A little while later a whole school of them came in and I thought I might get a shot at a big one, but ended up having to take the shot on a smaller one. I got a good shot on him and the float took off. Ben swam with me after it, and the whole school of wahoo was swimming with the wounded fish. After some frantic swimming we got within range but Ben missed the shot. Some sharks came in and we got that fish on the boat.
The next fish to come I guess was a group of 3. I was driving the boat and Vlad and Ben were in the water. Vlad hit a nice fish but his reel line got tangled on his bands, the force of the wahoo running actually cut the bands in half. He ended up getting the fish almost to the surface when it ripped out and he lost it.
Totally ignoring our dive flag!
Next I was in the water and I had a small fish and nice fish coming in. I was slowly sinking under water to get the shot on the bigger fish and I hear all this engine noise and the fish spooks and starts swimming away. I get my head out of the water and the charter boat Linda D is practically trolling over me. Ben, who was driving the boat, put our boat in his path to push him out. This guy was probably only 100 feet away, with his charters in the back oblivious.
Next another school comes in I took a long shot on a nice fish and hit behind the gill plate. He ran the float for a second and came off. No idea how, the slip tip must not have toggled deep enough.
At this point I’m starting to get a little pissed, all these rookie errors and missed fish. All three of us are experienced divers, what was going on?
Finally it comes together
Some time passes and now it’s Ben and me on the drift with Vlad driving. We had been drifting for a minute, and I look over at Ben Choi and he is looking past me and his eyes are bugging out. I turn and see this huge fish swimming up to me , I tip up and turn in the water and the fish doesn’t even care. I line up center mass and pull the trigger. I see the slip tip on the far side of fish. For a few seconds the fish just kind of circles, like it doesn’t know it’s been shot. Then it takes off like a rocket, and it ran down. I watched my float sailing away like 50 feet under water.
I start running it down but I start cramping, I call for the boat and Ben and I jump on it. It takes like a few scared minutes to find the float, but then I see it bobbing a few hundred feet away.
We jump in and I start pulling up the fish. Once I got it at 50 feet, Ben swam down and put a second shot in it. Then we all helped getting it in the boat. That is when I realized that this was a truly massive fish.
I made the mistake of gutting it, to help get the slip tip out. Which I know lost some pounds . When we got back later the fish went 85# on the scale.
