California wahoo

[Bill McIntyre]

Its a weird year in Southern California. The water temperatures are way above normal, and we are seeing fish that never come this far north. Quite a few blue marlin have been taken by rod and reel fisherman and at least one has been speared, bluefin tuna in the 400 pound class have been speared, and now the wahoo have shown up.

A couple of weeks ago I was on a friend's boat when he speared a 55 pound wahoo under a floating kelp paddy offshore. And then yesterday two of my dive buddies speared the first two wahoo ever brought aboard my boat, a 48 pounder and a 36 pounder.

Its not as easy as it sounds. Yesterday we must have jumped in the water on 20 or 25 paddies and drove by many more, and just one paddy was holding a school of wahoo. We covered 65 miles on the water and it would have been a total bust but for that one paddy with fish on it.

 

[Natural Selection]

Nice fish. and really strange to see in california. A part of me wishes those wahoo wander up here to SF!

 

[BatRay]

Awesome fish, Bill! Were you guys going after wahoo when you went out?

Have you noticed a difference in the numbers and behavior of WSB? Seems like those would be affected by the temps as well.

 

[Bill McIntyre]

We were going after wahoo. I didn't have much faith in it and I generally hate paddy hopping, but the coastal kelp bed diving has been so bad that I didn't think we had much to lose.

But while it was a big success, it was a matter of one kelp paddy holding fish. We must have looked at 20 to 25 other paddies and none of them were holding fish. Without that one paddy, it would have been an expensive disaster.

No one who dives with me has seen a white sea bass in months. The kelp beds where we hunt them are gone, and the water is too warm.

People are all excited about the exotic fish that are up here, but I would really prefer a normal year. I prefer swimming around in kelp beds to riding around in a boat burning gas and climbing in and out of the boat now and then.

 

[BatRay]

Are most of the kelp beds completely gone, then? Hopefully, the WSB migrated with the cold water, and will return when conditions go back to normal.

 

[Bill McIntyre]

Most of them are gone or very much thinned out. A thick bed can stand up and reach the surface in a current, but most beds are so thin that even a mild current bends them over to 20 feet below the surface and what remains below that doesn't provide much cover.

This always happens in late summer, but its much worse this year.

If water temps return to normal, the beds will grow back and we'll have white sea bass in the spring. But if the water stays so much warmer than usual, it will be a dismal year for me, and at age 76 I don't have that many years left.

 

[foxfish]

Have you had the chance to taste any speared wahoo, how does it compare with bass as an eating fish?

 

[Bill McIntyre]

Have you had the chance to taste any speared wahoo, how does it compare with bass as an eating fish?

My neighbor who shot that 55 pounder had my wife and I, along with some other couples, over to eat it the next evening. He barbecued the collars with olive oil and salt and pepper, and that was very good. He seared some filets and left them bloody in the middle, and I don't care for raw fish so that wasn't a fair test.

But I used to catch wahoo 40 years ago while marlin fishing off North Carolina, and I recall thinking that they were very good.