March is the time to use fast-moving topwater plugs for wahoos and tuna.
A “wee bit of nip” hovered in the morning air as we left the dock last March. It wasn’t “winter” cold,
but the early spring morning began on the low side of 50 degrees. Fortunately that temperature reading wouldn’t prove to be the precursor of a “not-so-hot” fishing experience.
But still, as we huddled behind the frosted curtains of Capt. Michael Wells’ Contender, Intimidator for the ride offshore, we resembled a hunting party rather than a fishing group. Most of us had donned multi-purpose camouflage hunting jackets, snuggies and warm pants under foul-weather bibs, plus toboggans and gloves.
Grumblings of “I hope this is worth it” followed occasional grunts. Fortunately, the day would be worth the effort — which we wouldn’t realize it until later.
Wells pointed the Intimidator southeast out of the Cape Fear River. Some light chop and small swells slapped the hull and rolled the boat, as the growing yellow sun crept over the eastern horizon. With the sun’s ascent into a nearly cloudless clear blue sky, the first of the day’s warmth reached us — and it felt good. NOAA had predicted the temperature would rise pretty quickly and, since the agency had gotten the wind and sea predictions correct, we hoped the feds would be on target about the thermometer, too.
After a couple of hours bobbing and weaving through the gentle swells, Wells announced we were nearing where thermal-imaging charts had shown a targeted eddy of warmer water. His passengers tried to get up out of his comfortable beanbag chairs and began looking for signs of fish.
While the water temperatures hadn’t climbed into the 70s, the combination of 65-degree water and a warming sun gave us good reason to remove gloves and partially unzip jackets.
Suddenly about a half mile ahead and slightly to our port, someone spied a current streak in the otherwise calm water. As we got closer to the section of “busy water,” we realized we had found an “upwelling.” As we eased into this surface commotion caused by the clash of underwater currents, current tendrils curled and boiled to the surface, carrying small bits of weed.
“We’ve got a temperature break too,” Wells said with some excitement. “It just bumped to 73 degrees.
“Let’s get some lines over and see if anybody is home and hungry. I’m going to ease across to the offshore edge and see what we have there.”
As the lures went over the side, it was cause to pause and take in what was happening — a March morning that didn’t start with much promise was rapidly getting better.
At 55 miles offshore from Southport, Wells had guided us to the Blackjack Hole and found a warm-water upwelling. The upwelling was roughly oval, approximately 3/4-mile long and half that wide.
Just as I was about to state the obvious — “This place sure looks fishy; I hope it’s holding some fish” — the first reel screamed as a deepwater denizen snatched the cedar plug at the outboard end of its line.
Brad Hughes quickly grabbed the wailing outfit and barely could pull the heavily bent rod from its gunwale holder.
“Hey boys, I believe we’ve got a nice one here,” he said with a growing smile as Kyle Hughes and I worked to get him situated in a standup harness.
After a few minutes Hughes had recovered about half the line and was getting comfortable reeling in the fish.
“It may not be as big as I first thought,” he said.
The fish must have heard his remark because it suddenly turned on the after-burners, heading toward the horizon as 80-pound-test monofilament melted off the reel.
“I believe you may have spoken a little too soon there, cuz,” Kyle Hughes said in a voice edged with a tease.
“I may have,” Brad said while gasping for breath. “This sucker must have seen that hungry look on our faces ’cause it sure decided it didn’t want to be around us.”
The battle continued and the balance slowly swung to the man wielding the rod and reel.
“I don’t think it’s a tuna,” Wells said. “It never dove like most tunas do. It stayed well up in the water column the whole time. I believe you’re being given a first-hand introduction to Mr. Wahoo.”
After a few minutes, a bluish color and tell-tale wahoo stripes became visible about 40 feet behind the twin Yamaha 250 outboards.
“It’s a wahoo,” Kyle Hughes said. “It’s a nice one too. Get him on up here a little more, and I’ll get him stuck and in the boat.”
When an immediate strike opens a day of fishing, it’s usually headed in one of two directions — wide open or downhill. Ours had a pause for a while as we maneuvered through the upwelling, trying to find a spot other fish preferred. After a couple of hours, the long starboard outrigger line began screaming, and the outlook brightened again.
The small blackfin tuna was no match for Kyle Hughes and the heavy offshore trolling gear. After a spirited first run, it burned itself up and came straight to the boat.
“They aren’t yellowfins, but they still eat pretty well, and we’ll catch them if they keep biting,” Wells said.
Blackfin and true albacore are the only white-meat tunas, and many anglers prefer them to yellowfins. We’d enjoy this one later.
As we began to put the lines out again, our crew noticed the upwelling was getting smaller. We wondered if it might concentrate the fish and make them easier to find.
We got our answer pretty quickly as another reel began singing that all-time favorite hit of anglers everywhere — zzzzz, zzzzzzzz. Before we had lines cleared to move after this fish, a second reel joined in harmony and the battle was rejoined. During the next few hours, fish continued to bite, but the upwelling continued to shrink.
Our catch was mostly blackfin tuna and wahoo, but we had no complaints. By the time the fish box was full and the bite began to slow, our muscles were barking.
The upwelling dwindled to the point it was difficult to see from more than a couple of hundred yards away. Agreeing if it’d been that small when we first saw it we probably wouldn’t have seen it — and our day could have gone much differently — we thanked our lucky stars.
“Unfortunately, early season offshore fishing can be hit and miss,” Wells said. “I studied the thermal-imaging charts for several days and headed to an area that looked good. But finding that upwelling was a pure stroke of luck.
“If we had been another half-mile off, we probably wouldn’t have seen it. We might have had as good a day in another location, but I can’t imagine it being any better.”
So the question to Wells became what would he have done if our crew hadn’t encountered an upwelling?
“I watched the satellite thermal images for about a week prior to the trip and had seen a warmer pocket of water moving into this area,” he said. “I don’t know if it was that upwelling we found or an eddy, but it had been around for a week and (it) was plotting much larger on the thermal scan. It may have been a lot larger and has been shrinking all week. It sure did shrink today. There won’t be anything left tomorrow.”
Wells said during late winter/early spring, he looks for eddies or warm pockets of water moving near the inside edge of the Gulf Stream.
“These are called ‘back-loop’ eddies and many times they actually move to the south, just inshore of the Gulf Stream,” he said. “Even better, they usually hold lots of baitfish and attract lots of predators.
“If there are a lot of feeding fish, the bait is pushed to the top, which attracts feeding birds and makes the melee easy to spot from a distance.
“Most of the time we aren’t lucky enough to find such a concentrated upwelling and have to ride for hours along a color change, rip or temperature break before finding fish. We often have our best early luck fishing water in the low 70s on the warm side of a several-degrees temperature break — often blended water, showing some of the Gulf Stream blue, but it also has a high percentage of green water.
“We usually find this water somewhere between 150- to 180-feet deep, but I’ve occasionally found it as shallow as 120 feet or totally off the continental shelf on the deep side.”
Wells said he primarily looks for tuna and wahoo during early trips, but catches include dolphin and sometimes a billfish, some of the fastest offshore predators, often with ravenous appetites.
“Because we’re often trying to cover a bunch of water to find the fish, I like to pull cedar plugs and swimming lures that have good action at a little higher speed,” Wells said. “I usually troll the lures between 8 and 10 knots and know I can speed up some if needed. This works particularly well early and late in the year when there aren’t good concentrations of baitfish and fish are hungry enough they aren’t very picky about their next meal.”
Wells said he usually trolls a mixture of skirted and unskirted 6-inch-long Sea Striker cedar plugs in natural and a variety of colors, plus some diving plugs. For the cedar plugs, he has many colors aboard the Intimidator but generally chooses natural, red, pink, blue, green, white and combinations of those colors.
Wells also had some Yo-Zuri Bonito and Braid Runner swimming plugs, jet heads and Wahoo Bombs for trolling below the surface. At several times during the day, he added a high-speed planer or trolling sinker to get these lures even deeper.
Wells likes to tell stories of chasing rapidly moving tuna. He said sometimes he sees schools of fish jumping as they move in the distance. If he can intercept them, he usually gets a few strikes.
He entertained us with tales of moving so quickly even the heavy cedar plugs and jet heads were bouncing along the surface, plus tuna moving so quickly he had to reel in the lures, run at serious speed across the ocean to get well in front of them and then quickly put the lures out before the tuna caught up.
Wells is dead serious in his claims if anglers can get lures in front of a school of moving tuna, they can catch them. It sure worked for us that day.
While he doesn’t use them until later in the year or until he finds a stationary school of feeding tuna, Wells also carries several dozen brined small to medium ballyhoo, rigged with Sea Witches and smaller plastic skirted lures.
“Typically early in the year, the cedar plugs and swimming lures will work better until the flying fish start showing up,” he said. “They allow us to troll faster and cover more water. However, when you find tuna with a school of baitfish hemmed up and gorging themselves, there’s nothing like the real thing.”
Wells didn’t use rigged natural baits during this trip. Because of the time of year (mid-March), the water was cool, the fish were moving quickly and seemed to like the cedar plugs and swimming lures.
No one onboard the Intimidator complained. We simply trolled an invitation to some tuna and wahoo, asking them home with us for dinner.
They just didn’t know they’d be the guests of honor.
