Epic Day of Wahoo Fishing in Fort Lauderdale
Capt. Paul Roydhouse
December 20, 2016
Fort Lauderdale - Saltwater Fishing Report
The wahoo fishing in Fort Lauderdale was epic yesterday with wahoos eating just about everything. We went out on a half day charter yesterday with a father and son. We started off trolling the reef, without much action... a few bonitos and cero mackerals in the box. No kingfish, the bite was kind of tough actually. We decided since the kingfish weren't biting to try slightly deeper that the reef so we went out to troll in 180-300ft of water hoping for wahoo and or tuna. Well, that was the right call because only a few minutes after trolling out there, we had our first wahoo on the line.
The fish hit like a freight train, smoking line off the reel, I thought the reel was going to explode. Wahoo have one of the strongest initial runs of any fish. The trick to wahoo is to let them take their first run and run some line off the rod. Once you get their head turned, they come in a lot easier. Wahoo dig deep, so if you're not sure if you're fighting a wahoo, bonito or kingfish, just look at the line. If it is tracking straight down and directly behind the boat as the fish gets closer, it's a wahoo... GET THE GAFF!
When wahoo surface, they are electric in color. They have iridescent stripes that are beautiful to see. The stripes and colors quickly fade after they are brought aboard so be ready with the camera fast to capture their beauty. When we boated our first wahoo, the biggest one that day, we were ecstatic. There were high fives all around from everyone. What's the only thing better than one wahoo in the box? 2 wahoos in the box. We put the lures back out and went back to trolling.
Over the next couple hours we hit 4 more fish that were probably wahoos. 1 we lost instantly right on the hookup, pulled the hooks. Another we lost right behind the boat, unfortunately a very common occurrence when catching wahoo. We lost it just before it came into sight, so I'm not 100% certain it was a 'hoo. But it was tracking straight down, behind the boat like a wahoo does, so I'm sure it was. And we caught and boated 2 others. After all those hits, the charter asked if we could extend the trip another couple hours. We didn't have an afternoon charter so we did.
Well, the wahoos were biting in the morning only it seems because after 12pm, we never got another wahoo bite. After about an hour of no bites and no action, we decided to mix it up and go hit the shipwreck. We went to a wreck that we know of in 280ft of water and did some deep drops. We caught about 8 or 9 vermillion snappers, a really nice snowy grouper and some small jacks. We also hooked into what I assume was a huge amberjack, but it got us into the wrecks before we could pull him far enough away from the wreck and he broke us off.
All in all, it was a great day with lots of big fish caught. The anglers got to take back some great eating fish and they had a great time catching some cool fish. The wahoos were snapping all over it seems as one of our other captains caught 2 and our big drift boat caught 1. The wahoo are still around, December is a great month to go after them. If you're looking for some great fishing, this is a great time of year to come out on a charter. Good luck to everyone fishing with us this week. I'll sea ya on the water.
Capt. Paul Roydhouse
www.FishHeadquarters.com
754-214-7863
Target Species:
wahoo, snowy grouper, vermillion snapper and jacks
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