Wahoo
This has got to be one of the worlds top wahoo areas. I can’t imagine any other place where wahoo fishing could be any better. Wahoo are here during Coiba’s peak fishing season, June through December. Sometimes they come late and sometimes they stay late, but August through November you can expect to catch many, every day.
I like to fish Wahoo early in the morning and then again the hour or two before sundown. Wahoo are found near shore, off rocks in 120 feet of water. Find the bait and you found the wahoo. We mostly troll diving plugs at 3 - 4 knots downwind or down current through the bait we’ve found on the sounder. If it’s a windy rainy day, all the better, that’s when they really bite.
When we get a strike, I speed up the boat, that causes more bites. When fighting a wahoo, it’s a great idea to cast a plug nearby the captured fish, others are following it.
Wahoo will follow a trolled wahoo. I’ll wrap a wahoo by it’s tail slowly troll it behind the boat then drop rapallas to it and reeling away, then dropping back, this gets bites too.
Wahoo will hang around a flashy teaser. We hang a mirrored teaser below a float, tie a filleted wahoo carcass to it and let it drift near the spot. When we troll by it or cast to it, we get hook-ups.
I like to use 20 - 30 pound tackle with 50 lb. line Any lighter and you’ll break too many off, any heavier and you don’t get the awesome feel of a wahoo screaming off line. We get a lot of 20 - 40 pound fish. Sometimes we get several fish going 50 - 70 pounds. A seventy pounder is impressive but not at all uncommon. Sometimes when fishing a a spot we call “Wahoo Rock” we get covered up in Wee-hoo, little buggers under 10 pounds. When that is happening, I’ve got a spot to move to where we get 70 pound plus fish. It’s weird but true. When “Wahoo Rock” is covered in WeeHoos my secret spot 20 minutes away is nearly guaranteed to produce at least a couple real whoppers.
Most of the very best wahoo spots are under 20 minutes from our lodging on Coiba. This makes it nice and easy to start the day off with a bang and finish the day with some great reliable action.
We release most keeping only a couple for wahoo salad sandwiches, wahoo sashimi, deep fried wahoo sandwiches and wahoo steaks for dinner.
Wahoo fishing is great action, often you must fight four small yellowfin between each wahoo bite. Dorado swim and feed in the same area and often we get sailfish hookups right next to an island, and boy to sailfish jump when they have a rapalla stuck on them.