Wahoo favor deep-running lures and often swallow them whole.

We started the day anchored on one of the world-famous “lumps” south of the Louisiana coast, aboard the 47-foot sportfisher Dataman. We were 130 nautical miles from our home port of Pensacola. Why the long run? That question would soon be answered by the sizzling of the drag on a 50-wide.

Once we swung into place on anchor, Zane Godwin started a steady flow of menhaden chunks. With a nice slick forming up, we freelined a chunk on a 13/0 circle hook. With the rod in hand, the angler actually gets to feed the tuna here, and it’s critical that these fish don’t feel any tension when they first pick up the bait. It’s also important that the line stay slack to keep the bait flowing along with the rest of the chumline. Errant chunks often meet with toothy mackerel and produce more cutoffs than you’d like.

July Jablonski was up first. Seconds after placing his chunk in the water, there was a boil and his reel began spilling line in freespool. He moved the drag to half strike, then reeled frantically to set the hook. This fish made several short runs before yielding to the gaff. A hefty 25-pound blackfin is no match for 50-pound conventional gear, but we were after bigger prey here. Minutes later, Steve Brown would bring up our first yellowfin of the day. Brownie’s fish was no behemoth, so the small yellowfin of probably 20 pounds was tagged by Capt. Myles Colley and released to grow up a lot. Colley numbered this fish as the ninth one tagged for the week.

Jablonski’s buddy Yong Yen from Alabama joined us on his first bluewater trip, but you wouldn’t know it by his enthusiasm or catch ratio. He worked tirelessly, catching several blackfin, yellowfin up to 40 pounds and probably his favorites of the day, a dozen or so king mackerel scaling 20 to 35 pounds. His eyes lit up with excitement as he described the ingredients he would add to the mackerel to make a favorite dish of his.

A charter captain from Gulf Breeze, John Ferres rounded out the crew and added several tunas to the day’s mixed bag. We missed out on the big tuna, as we didn’t get anything over 40 pounds. I joked with my friends, who had fished aboard the Dataman just a few days prior, that they caught our fish too, tallying six yellowfin over 100 pounds, with the biggest weighing in at 134 pounds. Isn’t that always the story, though? You should have been here yesterday.

We had our shots at bigger fish, as we watched them roll in the slick just off the stern. What a sight to witness a feeding frenzy and the boil of large yellowfin, mixed with speedy blackfin and flashy mackerel. But our trip wasn’t over and Colley had a spot he wanted to try for wahoo. There were no arguments from the cockpit. Everyone had several fish under their belt once the tuna bite had slowed. The other 20 or so boats on the lump were reporting the same catches as we were. It seems the cold front that had just passed had changed the bite.

Dole out diced menhaden chcunks to get the bite going.

We headed north a few miles to a spot Colley had never fished, but thought was worth a shot. His chartplotter indicated a submerged well head (the area is riddled with petroleum and natural gas drilling platforms) that might spell success.

As we approached the well head, about a quarter of a mile from West Delta 143 rig, we were greeted by a beautiful bluewater push and color change that screamed fish. Add this to the proximity of structure and we had to catch a fish, right?

Zane put out a mixed spread of lipped plugs and trolling lures that might attract a wahoo and it took us only 15 minutes to get the kind of bite that can make a trip. The starboard shotgun line started sizzling off 50-pound mono; it had to be a wahoo at this speed. The deep bow of Jablonski’s standup rod indicated this fish had some shoulders, and I just kept mumbling “Be a good fish.”