I got the call from Jimmy on Christmas day to load up the wahoo gear and it was game on. We knew it would be foggy so we decided on a late start even though we were going to the Georgetown Hole. Tons of life on the bottom and a boat near us lost a handful of blackfin to the sharks and finally boated one. We had all heavy wire wahoo gear out all day and wanted to stay focused on that. Finally around 1pm, the bite turned on and had a wahoo scream on the 12" marauder but pulled the hook quickly; not much you can do about that. Lure had clear signs of wahoo damage to the high density plastic.
Shortly after we got our fish while I was putting out the down rigger. I though I had goofed and popped the line from the clip while feeding it out; nope. Fish on! The 50w made quick work of it and we were all smiles despite the slow day. That’s pretty much how it goes this time of year.
We kept up the grind until about 3:30pm before heading back to greet the fog. By then we had trolled all the way down to SWB and still no strong signs of surface life.
It was WARM offshore. We were down to shorts and working on our sunburns all day. Water temp mid 70s.
1/2 on wahoo.
10/10 on barracuda
4/4 fishermen (1 woman) made it home safely so a good winter trip.
Fog went 10 miles out
Lit up fish. We all agreed it was about 50lbs. Scale at the dock said 39.6 so the scale is overruled/invalid:
I got about as much meat out of the wahoo head as I would from a 15lb grouper. On a 40lb wahoo the cheeks were almost nothing and all the meat was on the top of the head and side of lower jaws. The throat/collar yielded lots of meat.
Turned out Awesome. I made it with tons of habanero and tobasco peppers from the garden so it will be a nice warming meal this winter. I made a 3 gallon batch of fish head stew so I’ll be freezing alot of it. I added about a pound of scraps Marlene was able to scrape off of the spine after cleaning. Not a pinch of meat was wasted and the crabs go hungry.
Good deal, Jordan! Glad y’all got out and back safely. And you’re right, that ‘hoo looks bigger in the pictures of y’all holding him than in the box. Good catchin’.
“I’m not a hundred percent in love with your tone right now…”
Good to see Jordan. Glad you got a nice christmas fish. Very few people take the time and have the love to use the whole fish including the head and etc. I have fish heads stacked in the freezer and it seems sinful to not use them. Thanks for sharing and teaching by example for appreciation of the whole fish. Happy New Year
Thanks but it’s already in the cooking section. One thing I did differently this time was to braise the head in the oven for 45 min instead of on the stove top because it was so big. I shared the soup with my chef friends downtown and it was a hit. http://old.charlestonfishing.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=113279
nice trip! next time im in diego garcia i may have to pay a philipino for some fish head soup. ive always heard it was good and that looks great so time to try it.
