Van Fleet favors the Bibb, Duane and Eagle wrecks for vertical jigging. Those buoys point to wahoo trolling grounds, but they’ll also present real hazards when a hooked wahoo makes a run toward them. Those are the same ledges where lobsters live, so look for the lobster buoys. Even a few feet of bottom relief might hold wahoo. If not, it’s a good idea to try something else and come back later when the traffic has died down.īeyond the reef, look for drop-offs and ledges. If you get out under good conditions, without too many boats around, all the better. “My best day, I had 14 bites and caught nine wahoo-over one tide cycle-on a strip bait rigged with a blue-and-white witch by Wild Willy fished off a planer. “This past year, the big push happened in October and November,” Van Fleet says. While 80-plus-pound fish are uncommon, what the fishery lacks in size, it makes up for in numbers. A 30- or 40-pound wahoo is respectable for the Keys, though he sees many much bigger.

Large female wahoo feed ahead of the first large cold fronts that come through the Keys, Van Fleet says. Though wahoo can be caught year-round in the Keys, the biggest fish come in the fall and winter, around the moon tides, especially when those happen to coincide with a pre-frontal weather system. They tend to stay in an area for several days when conditions are right.” In the colder months, move out deeper and find the color change. “Just because the water looks bad, it doesn’t mean the wahoo are not around. “Cooler water and green water push the fish out as far as 600-foot depths,” Van Fleet says. Those currents change every day, and the effects of water flow from the Gulf make tide changes along the reef tricky. Local knowledge is indispensable as well, such as the way the water moves, the migratory patterns of the fish, and the prey species.įrom Alligator Reef to Molasses Reef, for example, the Gulf Stream swings near the reef as it turns north around the peninsula, creating nutrient-rich eddies that carry both forage and predators. When the surface temperature drops, hunt for them deeper. Have lines in the water half an hour before dawn. Wahoo gather along reef drop-offs and actively feed during these big tides. The full-moon and new-moon phases, when wahoo feed actively, are favored times to target them. Think of the three T’s: tide, terrain and temperature.

He says the universal precepts of wahoo fishing hold true in the Upper Keys. Through years of obsessive fishing, Ryan Van Fleet of Tavernier, Florida, has deciphered wahoo patterns in the Upper Keys, and developed reliable tactics for small-boat anglers. It’s productive, easily accessible, and while not as well-known as other wahoo hotspots, it provides a proving ground for successful strategies and tactics. There’s a wahoo fishery between Marathon and Key Largo that rivals any in the Southeast.

Commercal deep drop fish finders