White Marlin on wire and cable leaders intended for Wahoo
To begin with we are probably one of the last boats that ever target White Marlin since almost all of our charters prefer meat fish and we do what our charters request. Not that unusual for charter boats in our area especially since I never had the opportunity to fish for billfish other than 30 years ago or more down in Mexico in my younger days and have no real skills on how to catch them other than a lucky bite every once and a while on a lure intended for tuna. Well now we can emphatically say Whites will eat Wahoo lures on wire and cable when there is enough of them around and when we catch them this way any accomplished Marlin fishermen can have a field day. We had 3-4 Marlin bites the other day and my friend fishing down south of the Dot Dog inshore had 2-3 on Wahoo lures rigged with cable so go figure. We had our White bites at 30-35 fathom between the Tea Cup and Hot Dog and they were mostly in the early morning before the fleet arrived but none the less we had some whites. I can honestly say our charters enjoyed the few we did get and it added to the day watching them jump and carry on the way they do plus one was pretty good size to boot but we never actually measured it as we took a quick picture and got it back in the water to live another day. A few years ago we got lucky at the Lobster Claw and caught a Blue Marlin on a number 32 planner with a B/W Ilander lure and horse Ballyhoo which was intended for a Bluefin and it had to go over 500 lbs but that was the last billfish we caught on our boat until this past week. I guess if we really new what we were doing we could have caught more but our spread was for Wahoo mostly with wire or cable leaders as I got tired of losing expensive lures to Wahoo and King Mackerel using mono leaders on some of our recent trips. Except for a real nice catch of decent size Mahi that was about it on our boat and on one trip early this week we never even had one knockdown fishing inside the Baltimore most of the day. It seemed the bite moved south of where we fished at least on White Marlin and had very few reports of any tuna being caught but the Wahoo fishing seems to be getting better and better when you get in the warmer water. We stayed offshore to avoid the False Albacore and King Mackerel. The good water seemed to have moved south from where we were to best of my knowledge but I think recent reports reflect this with some awesome White Marlin fishing by the boats actually targeting them.
Right now the conditions we are seeing offshore reminds me so much of last fall with a great White bite but the tuna seem to be far and few between at least the ones over 40 lbs and hoping to see some move down the line from up north as the water cools down. There still seems to be some pretty warm water in our area that just might be a little warm for tuna but there is no shortage of bait just like last fall so who knows what is in store for us southern canyon fishermen over the next few weeks. Anybody want to go White Marlin fishing with us now that we caught a few blind dumb ones by sheer luck. Maybe we will get lucky and catch a Yellowfin on a White Marlin lure by accident like we had the Whites bites recently.
PS: A message to the tuna gods: Please Yellowfins and Longfins make a presence in our Southern canyons before it is striper time and the weather gets too nasty to get offshore.
If the tuna ever should show up in fairly decent numbers and the night bite starts up we have open October 3-4 for a canyon overnight trip or day troll trips as the party that had those dates rescheduled to October 17th. Give us a call or e-mail us and we will see if we can work something out.
Nothing but blind luck but the few early am White bites were fun and added some real enjoyment to the trip especially with the lack of tuna.
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