East Cape Wahoo Strike
Setting out for a day on the water we had no idea that the wahoo gods had in store for us. As the boat left the dock before the sun was coming up I had a feeling that this was going to be a great day of fishing. I stayed up pretty late the night before rigging all my wire leaders for the wahoo I was dreaming of catching. So as we headed out the water was calm over the sea of Cortes and the sun just starting to break as we came south our of cabo san lucas. We had a pretty good run in the boat before we could fish, we had heard the day before that the wahoo bite was going crazy on the east cape. So after about three hours of hard running in the boat we decided to get the lines in the water. I set up the out riggers and my buddy steve set up the the cockpit pattern, as captain fernando got us on the fish.
It was about an hour after dropping our lures in the water that we had a huge wahoo strike. All at once four of the rods bent to the extent that they looked like they were going to break. We were fishing with really light tackle and even lighter fishing line. We are only out there for the sport of it, so we take no fish that we catch, only pictures. Anyways as everyone on the boat was going crazy from the four rods screaming like they were about to blow up. You could feel the excitement in the cockpit of the boat, it was so think you could have cut it with a knife. We reeled in the other lines that didn’t have fish on them to get them out of the way, and started to fight these four fish that we had hooked up. After we lost one due to our own fault we got our first wahoo to the boat, and she was big about sixty pounds. It is a little tricky to get these fish un hooked and released but you can do it once someone with some experience shows you the right way to do it. Well we did the same with the other two witch went as big as the first but still nice size.
Once that first hookup came it seemed like we were just on fire, with fish practically fighting to eat our lures. That day we caught over 14 wahoo and 6 stripped marlin, all tagged and released. I will never forget this day and I can guarantee that the guys that were with me wont either. So if you ever get the chance to fish baja don’t pass it up, but please release what you dont need and keep conservation in mind. Its a very fragile ecosystem out there and we need to help preserve it.