A Catch Worth Cheering : Venice Anglers Make Their Annual Cabo Excursion for Wahoo, One of the Fastest, Feistiest, Fightingest, Bitingest Fish in the Sea

A fish called wahoo has to be special. It’s only a species of mackerel-- Acanthocybium solanderi-- but some people say it’s the fastest fish in the sea, capable of bursts up to 60 m.p.h.

There are no records of time trials, but a wahoo would probably eat the clocks, anyway. Judging by the experts, a wahoo’s favorite diet is hardware. Instead of live bait, anglers use Marauder lures nearly a foot long, which seem oversized for a fish that averages only 20 to 30 pounds, until you inspect the bite marks on a lure a wahoo has attacked.

Attacked is the word.

The lures are attached to heavy wire leaders because they cost about $40 each, and a wahoo can bite off any kind of monofilament. It has serrated rows of tiny teeth set into wide jaws, including a movable upper jaw, like a barracuda’s, and offset to function like sheet-metal cutters.

Its upper and lower palates are armored with bone, which makes it difficult to set a hook. The lures are trolled at a swift 10 knots behind an open, 22-foot panga, with the rods in holders and the drag set just hard enough to keep line from running off the reel. Then the fisherman trolls, perhaps for hours, hoping to encounter one. Unlike tuna, wahoo don’t run in schools.

But, Jack Bailey says, “When it hits, you’ll know it’s a wahoo.”

It can hardly be anything else, except a marlin. The line goes zingggg! and the panga skipper guns his outboard to full throttle to set the hook. Then you grab the rod and crank the reel like mad. Fishing for wahoo is a little wild, as are some of those who do it.

Bailey is president of the Venice Anglers, who descend upon the tip of Baja California around Thanksgiving each year for their annual weeklong wahoo tournament.

A 143-pound wahoo--the largest taken off Baja--had been caught out of nearby Cabo San Lucas only a few days earlier by Jim Badia of Vancouver, Canada, while fishing for marlin. The world record is 155 pounds 8 ounces, taken last year in the Bahamas.

So the excitement was feverish when the 52 entrants landed at Los Cabos and met the night before the tournament to draw for panga pairings. The chaotic process was conducted at a roar.

“This started at LAX,” Howard Gawthrop of Simi Valley shouts.

Each angler will fish for three of the six days, but there aren’t many sign-ups for Tuesday. Vice president Bill Tittle will show the hotel’s manager how to realign his satellite dish to get the Ram-49er Monday night game, leaving little time for sleep.

The group might have been picked at random out of a phone book. There are women and men, young and old, doctors, lawyers, teachers, yuppie professionals and a beer-drinking biker type in a tank-top with hair and tattoos covering his shoulders.

It seems to be a remarkably mixed but congenial group that one psychologist finds irresistible. Bernice Marshall is a Ph.D. from Santa Monica. She doesn’t fish, either, but Bailey’s wife, Linda, is her manicurist. Marshall was intrigued by talk about the wahoo adventure.

“I was fascinated that you could have such a variety of people,” she says, studying the group over her spectacles at dinner one night. “And it works. It’s delightful. I think it’s because they leave their egos and other excess baggage at home. They have one thing in common: They love to fish.”

They must. They are up at 4:30 a.m. and on their way by 5.

San Jose Del Cabo, with a population of 12,000, has been surpassed by its booming neighbor, Cabo San Lucas, while retaining the charms of the sleepy village it was when founded in 1730. It’s still dark as the fishermen drive through the streets and turn onto the dirt road called Benito Juarez Boulevard that will lead them 1 1/2 miles to the smaller fishing village of La Playa--the beach.

Fourteen pangas await, illuminated by headlights, the stars and a full moon on the wane. Bad for fishing, some anglers would say. Tomas Cantor, manager of the La Playa panga fleet, shrugs.

“If somebody doesn’t catch fish, they say it’s the moon,” Cantor says. “When the fish are biting, they’ll eat anytime.”

At 5:45 a.m., the fiberglass pangas are pushed down the beach into the surf and paddled out until the skippers can start their motors, and one by one they vanish into the black horizon.

The best time to fish for wahoo is at daybreak, the best place--usually--at the Gorda Banks, five to seven miles off the Punta Gorda headland. These waters also teem with yellowfin tuna, leaping here and there, and dolphin that parade offshore.

The first day’s catch will produce some tuna and dorado, or mahi mahi, but only three wahoo.

“The dorado will hit from the surface,” says Keefe Dawson, who is fishing from Lupe Banaga’s panga. “The wahoo come up from the bottom--usually when you’re . . . over the side or eating lunch.”

The Venice Anglers also have a roosterfish tournament in May. Dawson won it this year by taking a 47-pound catch on 15-pound test line, but he prefers to fish for wahoo.

“You release most of (the roosterfish),” Dawson says. “But the wahoo are the best eating fish in the ocean.”

Finding the wahoo is tricky, but so is finding the Gorda Banks. The pangas have no electronic fish finders, no depth sounders. They don’t even have compasses. Life jackets? Running lights? The U.S. Coast guard would be aghast.

But the guide-skippers know they’re at the Gorda Banks when certain landmarks line up just right. They say they know when the wahoo are there.

“We can smell them,” says Lupe’s younger brother, Chato, with Cantor translating.

Chato, 28, has been fishing these waters “since I was a child” and has taken wahoo up to 100 pounds. Today, when only three wahoo are caught, he will find two for a newcomer, Hunter Von Leer of Santa Monica. They weigh 26 and 25 1/2 pounds and put him into the lead for the tournament’s $1,000 grand prize, based on total weight caught. Second place pays $500, third $250, and there is $500 for the single largest fish.

“We had two hits and two fish,” Von Leer says. “They’re a good fighting fish. If they run at you, you can’t reel fast enough.”

The next day, only six wahoo are taken, but again Chato will have two, one for each of his anglers. Perhaps he can smell them.

On the next-to-last day, Chris Bessenty of Venice lands a 41.2-pound wahoo, edging a 40.72-pounder taken by Orlando Flores of Los Angeles on Day 2, with Chato. But Bessenty is all through fishing, and others have one day remaining.

That night, Bessenty skulks around the hotel placing bananas on the doorknobs of anglers who will fish the next day. Bananas are said to be bad luck for fishermen.

The curse works. Nobody tops his wahoo. Actually, the wahoo fishing has been as slow as it has ever been for the tournament. Only 17 are caught all week; usually, each angler will catch one or more.

Von Leer has caught no more wahoo, and Frank Spencer of Cleveland and George Newson, an Englishman from Torrance, have moved past him with two larger catches each. As the last day dawns, Newson trails Spencer by about two pounds.

The fishing has been disappointing on the Gorda Banks. Newson, who has caught one fish each day, draws Lupe for the second day in a row. Lupe asks where he wants to go. Most of the pangas head for San Cristobal on the far side of Cabo San Lucas--a long trip based on desperation. Newson and one other panga opt for the Gorda Banks.

“Gorda had paid off for me the first two days,” Newson says.

They have two hits at first light but no hookups. Then, at 8:10 a.m., zingggg!

“Lupe hit the gas and kept the line tight,” Newson says. “He wouldn’t let me get a slack line.”

Newson’s third wahoo weighs 29.6 pounds for a winning total of 76.86.

“I have to give the credit to the lures,” he says. “I was fishing purple with pink stripes. It’s the hot one . . . the medium size--not the largest. Caught all three of them on the same lure. Beat the hell out of that lure.”

Wahoo!

Panga fishing for wahoo may be arranged by contacting Tomas Cantor, Pueblo La Playa, Los Cabos, B.C.S., Mexico. Phone (evenings): 684-2-11-95.