Abacos Bahamas Wahoo Fishing

[Reel Candy Sportfishing]

Hey Folks,

The Wahoo bite here in Marsh Harbour continues. The vast majority of our charters have been half day trips set up around the tides. Six bites per trip has been the consistent average with fish in the 40 lb class making up the majority coming over the sides. Each trip seems to get a little better with the size increasing, slowly, but noticeably.
We are expecting several fronts to drop down over the next week or so, but this brings in a good bait supply and another wave of 'Hoos ! We have the next few days off and will get another update posted as soon as we can get back out on the edge.

Tight Lines !!!

Captain Kevin M. Deiter
www.kevin@reelcandyfishing.com
www.reelcandyfishing.com

[Captain Fred Archer]

Good goin', Cappy!

Lovin' seeing that tide thing too on wahoo dedicated charters. Works like a champ! Burn less fuel, catch a bunch of fish, happy customers and a double day. All good!

Thanks for the report and good luck with that next wave.

Website www.FredArchersWorldofFishing.com

[FESS]

This may be one of my weakest and or least attempted fishing technique.
So how do the tides get played....fish two hours before low and 2 after low....and two before high and 2 after high?
I have no clue really
.
Fred, do you remember a Capt. Dan from S. fla area that was like a wahoo king of his day (1970's to 1980's and hopefully still to this day)...I think he was from Pompano/Hillsboro area...any clue?

[sportfishingusa]

very nice to hear.. had the wife there last year and had two days booked but got blown out so we went conch diving and went to the bars!!!

hope to get back soon! thanks for the heads up!!

[floridadeckie]

Capt Kev, you still runnin that Jersey out of Boat Harbor?

[Captain Fred Archer]

Fess,

Didn't know him personally, but knew of him. He had a great rep as a 'hoo hunter.

Tides and moon phase are very important keys to catching, instead of just fishing for wahoo, or at least I certainly found that to be the case. Wahoo are a very different fish. They are mostly a by-catch for those who don't seriously target them. The rewards are great for those who do and know how. But there is no "short version" of fishing for them.

As with everything, "Knowledge it the key to success". There has only been one book (actually a double set) ever written about wahoo fishing. Here it is.

Website FredArchersWorldofFishing.com

[Reel Candy Sportfishing]

Capt Kev, you still runnin that Jersey out of Boat Harbor?

Yes !

We just added a 38 Viking Sportfish to the fleet, along with our twin engine 26' CC. We were busy over the holiday weeks with all three boats running almost every day.

Captain Kevin M. Deiter

Kevin@reelcandyfishing.com
www.reelcandyfishing.com

[Reel Candy Sportfishing]

This may be one of my weakest and or least attempted fishing technique.
So how do the tides get played....fish two hours before low and 2 after low....and two before high and 2 after high?
I have no clue really
.
Fred, do you remember a Capt. Dan from S. fla area that was like a wahoo king of his day (1970's to 1980's and hopefully still to this day)...I think he was from Pompano/Hillsboro area...any clue?

I actually prefer the top of the tide. Hour before, hour after. I dont like spending too much time after that only targeting 'Hoos. I will start switching the spread out once the wahoo bite slows.

[rarhomes]

Maybe somebody can explain this. I can understand how tides may effect fishing if the gulf stream or deep water is next to shore (like in the Bahama's), but can it effect fishing in the gulfstream if it's 40 miles offshore ? And if so, how would figure when the tides are high or low?

[Captain Fred Archer]

Thanks for the comeback, Candy Man. I'm with you on the hour or so on either side of the tide. I also absolutely believe that the full moon tides and to a lesser extent the new moons and the ones that preceed them are THE time to fish for 'hoo. The timing of the tides at that time gave us three good shots at 'hoo...early, around noon and again at six or so. The time in between was usually worthless for us on them and anything else and my repeat guys were all for returning to the marina for breakfast and some coffee or lunch if the bite was close, which it often was in Cabo - if you knew what you were doing. They are very special and different fish and those who know that and adjust how they fish catch a helluva lot more of them than those who don't.

You are obviously one of those in the know and I admire the heck out of that. Wahoo are my favorite fish of them all.

R...You have read my books (not a good thing to admit around here at times, LOL) and you probably know my attitude about tide changes and their effect on bites, nearshore, offshore, or anywhere. Put simply, I dunno why, I just know that it's so. Over fifty years of meticulously kept logs (logs that have been kept longer than many here have been alive, let alone fished) have proven that beyond a shadow of a doubt, at least for me.

I have also written of my bass fishing tournament days when an old pro told me to figure out the tide times on whatever lake that I was fishing (there was and is a way to calculate that) and to be sure that I was on fish and fishing hard whenever they happened. Long story short, the first time that I ever laid eyes on the then forested Toledo Bend Reservoir on the Texas/Lousiana border I took third and just missed first in a national bass tournament where I had found a channel bend with a lot of deep fish on it on the only practice day that I got.

It was a full moon, the spawn was over, so that bite was over and the fishing sucked all day long, with the early and late bite unavailable to us because of the tournament hours. I "lived" on those fish, just like the old man told me to and I fished hard as hell right on tide time. The fish moved up on the channel edge and fed hard for about twenty or thirty minutes and by the time my partners put their viennies and weiners down, I had them "side pocketed" and netting fish after fish, instead of fishing the water that I had left them. I came down with a massive throat infection on day two. Wound up in the hospital for two days after the tourney was over, or I'm sure I would have won the damned thing.

That's just one of many similar times that figuring inland tides and following the old axom of not leaving fish to find fish won me a lot of money.

And you know what? I'll bet that there are some deer hunters out there who can tell you how they are sometimes the only ones in the woods "at the wrong time of day for the deer to be up and moving around" who have the moon/tide game figured out too - either by figuring them out for themselves or by using a solunar table of one kind of another. It sure as hell worked for me! Let's just say that my buddies up in our northern New Jersey deer hunting camp could never figure what made me slip away from brunch or lunch and mid-day nap time and then come back, dragging a nice buck. I never told them, either. We shared tags back in those days (don't tell da law!), and I wanted to fill everybody else's tags for them. Yeah, in spite of what some might think, I was a deer killing animal back in the day.

The funniest thing was that to a man, except for the old man who owned the property and had known me since I was a kid and who I shared the "secret" with, the other guys thought that I hunted those bucks and stalked and shot them. They nicknamed me "Bushwacker". They didn't know how close they were to the truth, but I was in a tree, not on the ground. Old Mister Tucker, who owned the land, did and used to wink at me when the others said stuff like "I don't have the patience for that and can't hunt that slowly and quietly" and such. Lew Tucker used to make that worse by called me "The Assassin".

Like I said, I'm sure that certain deer hunters out there are shaking their heads, chuckling and saying to themselves, "Yup". And I'm sure that there are others out there saying, "Aw, bullshit". Makes me no nevermind, either way.

Tides...I dunno why, but they sure are important to both fishermen and hunters.

Just ask that Candy Man...IF he's willing to spill more of the wahoo fishing beans, that is!

Website www.FredArchersWorldofFishing.com