Wahoo fishing has turned on 60 miles off the Louisiana coast, guide says
Trolling with anything that resembles bait around the Green Canyon and Ship Shoal blocks will most likely land a wahoo right now, Capt. Tommy Pellegrin said.
“They’re eating everything,” Pellegrin said. “It would actually be easier to catch them if they weren’t so thick. They’re actually attacking our swivels and cutting our lines.”The owner of Custom Charters has been going 60 to 70 miles out of Cocodrie and pulling Braid Marauders, skirted surface baits and ballyhoo and smashing the wahoo.
Pellegrin prefers real or plastic ballyhoo trailers, rigging them himself. He uses larger baits, between 10 and 12 inches, to target wahoo because tuna will not attack those longer baits.
“Hot pink Braid Marauders are my favorite,” Pellegrin said. “As far as skirted surface baits go, I usually use black-and-pink, black-and-purple, and what I call blue-and-ice (translucent purple and blue).”
Wahoo are not blue-water specific fish and can be caught in transitionary blue-green water, as well, he said. And Pellegrin said the more-opaque waters are actually favorable for wahoo fishing.
“The water we’ve been fishing hasn’t been quite cobalt blue,” he said. “In between green and blue is the best.”
Pellegrin likes to troll around rigs and any floating structures when going after wahoo.
“We fish the green canyon and Ship Shoal areas,” he explained. “Rigs, buoys, floating debris, wrecks and reefs are all good to troll around, but I prefer smaller structures like tie-on buoys and wreck markers.
“Any buoy or piece of floating debris will usually have wahoo around it.”
Since the tuna have not begun to heat up quite yet, Pellegrin suggested going after some amberjack after limiting on wahoo — if anglers can get past the red snapper.
“We just drop whole pogies down for AJs,” Pellegrin said. “I caught an AJ over 90 pounds last time we went. They are thick, but so are the (out-of-season) snapper.”
