Tuna, wahoo invade bluewater

Cedar plugs are producing good catches out of Little River

It’s hard to imagine a better time of year to go offshore for bluewater fish than early May, and Capt. Jeff Fisher of Calabash, N.C., says the action out of Little River has been fantastic this week.

“The tuna and wahoo have been here, and the dolphin are starting to really show up -cely,” said Fisher (910-540-1116). The yellowfin tuna have ranged from 30 to 60 pounds, and the wahoo have been from about 40 all the way up to 92 pounds.”

Fisher said that popular offshore “holes” and ledges offshore from Little River to Georgetown have been very pro- ductive, including the “Scarp,” the “McMarlin ledge,” the “Georgetown Hole” and the 100/400 and 090/390 lines. They’ve been pretty much all around this year,” said Fisher, who has had most of his success pulling C&H cedar plugs.

“It’s been the bigger, the better,” Fisher said. “We’ve been pulling them between 9 and 12 knots, catching wahoo and tuna. A Green Machine is another high-speed bait that’s been working great on wahoo.”

Pulling cedar plugs several knots faster than you can pull standard ballyhoo rigs has allowed fishermen like Fisher to cover a lot of ground offshore and find fish more easily.

“If you’re trolling and you aren’t getting hit in a certain area, put out cedar plugs and start to cover more ground,” Fisher said. “If you can find the tuna and stay with ’em, you can catch 4 to 6 at a time.” he said. “As soon as you get a hit, don’t pull off the throttle until you’ve gone 10 to 15 seconds without getting multiple hits. Then you can slow down to idle and fight the fish.”

Fisher said that a lot of feeding yellowfins have been found by captains keeping an eye out for diving birds.

“And if you find them, for gosh sakes, don’t troll right through ’em; go around the edges. If you troll right through the middle of them, they’re going to go down, and they might not come up until they’re 2 or 3 miles away.”