Capt. Tommy Pellegrin likes to think he has the luxury of fishing out of Cocodrie. Now, before you start complaining that he is being just a little shortsighted, consider that his reasoning has more to do with the Mississippi River than it does a territorial stance.
“We have clear water all the time,” Pellegrin explained. “Out of Venice this time of year, there is a lot of muddy river water on the surface that covers up all that blue water underneath. And that river water is a lot colder than the blue water.”
While this might look like an impossible scenario for fishing wahoo, which love salty, blue water, Pellegrin offered a little assistance for anglers headed down the Mississippi River during March.
“How deep the river water is varies a whole lot,” he pointed out. “What you can do is tweak your electronics to pick up that thermocline down there that is the difference in temperature between the warm blue water and the cold river water.”
There can be as much as a 25-degree difference in temperature between river water and blue water.
Finding this thermocline is extremely important for wahoo anglers because the fish are down there in the blue water looking up at the thermocline because that’s where the bait is.
“Bait wants to be on the surface, but the surface is too cold,” Pellegrin said. “The surface of the blue water may be 15 feet down, but that’s where the bait and the wahoo are going to be.”
Pellegrin said anglers can take advantage of this scenario in one of two ways. The first would be to fish with downriggers that can position your bait at precise depths. Or anglers can simply fish lipped baits and figure out the distance out the back of the boat necessary to pull it down to the thermocline.
“Say the thermocline is at 15 feet,” Pellegrin continued. “A shaky bait like a Braid Marauder would be better for a higher thermocline, so you change to something with a lip. You want something that can get down 15 feet or more. A lot of people won’t go out and buy a $500 downrigger, but everybody can buy a $25 Bomber bait with a lip.”
Through trial and error, anglers can learn how to get their lipped baits to run precisely at the thermocline through experimenting with how far they send it back out the boat and by tweaking boat speed.
“When you get it right, those wahoo see this hot pink Bomber swimming by right at the mixing water in the thermocline, but they don’t see the leader because it’s up in the dirty water,” Pellegrin said. “POW — all of a sudden you got a fish.”
