Reeling in a bullet

THE ROD TIP BOUNCES in staccato bursts of panic like an antenna receiving terror transmissions from the little chihuil trolled behind the boat.

“You see that rod jiggle? That bait is nervous,” nods Eben Browne, a minister of the gospel on Sundays and a deacon in the cult of wahoo the rest of the week.

Here where the warm water of the Gulf of California merges with the Pacific at the tip of Baja, one of the world’s most elusive and prized game fish -- the wahoo -- makes its late fall run. Browne, whom locals call Dr. Wahoo, is ready. His angular frame is taut, anticipating the strike.

The boat holds steady at 4 mph, aided by a north breeze riffling the surface. Midmorning light shimmers in deep blue water like the facets of a jewel.

Nine other boats carrying American anglers circle the area not far off the desert shore. The skipper steers the panga toward a bait ball dimpling the sur- face.

Suddenly the rod jerks twice. A giant swirl engulfs the chihuil and flattens the surface as a big, dark shadow of a fish appears 70 feet off the stern.

The skipper guns the outboard motor to tighten the line and set the hook, but the fish has struck too fast and escapes. Browne reels in the baited lure. The spine of the foot-long chihuil is split as if gashed by a giant pair of scissors.

Browne adjusts the hook and tosses the shredded scrap overboard. It’s 9 a.m.; wahoo are cruising in water 170 feet deep a few miles north of the Gordo Banks.

“Regresa, wahoo, regresa,” the skipper whispers, beckoning the fish to return as he slips the motor into gear and resumes the troll.

Bony speed demons

The name wahoo suggests a party animal, but these bony speed demons are anything but. Among game fish -- dorado, yellowfin tuna, yellowtail, marlin, to name a few -- wahoo (Acanthocybium solanderi) may be the most fickle and challenging to catch.

Often found on restaurant menus as a chunky white steak called ono (Hawaiian for sweet or delicious), wahoo favor the tropics. Legend has it that the fish earned its name from early Hawaiian anglers who, upon hooking up thought their line was stuck on the bottom of the island, Oahu.

They are largely solitary, spending much of their adult life scattered in the open ocean from Hawaii to Latin America, the Caribbean and the Maldives, and they are so unpredictable that scientists don’t know where they spawn, where they migrate or how many there are.

Some say wahoo look like giant mackerel or barracuda; others say they more closely resemble and behave like billfish. Genetic tests indicate they belong to the tuna family, except they’re coldblooded and don’t look like tuna.

“We know very little about the wahoo. They’re quite a mystery,” says Chris Boggs, a federal biologist at the Pelagic Fisheries Research Program at the University of Hawaii.

The fish is moody as a tropical storm, viciously attacking trolled feather-flocked lead head jigs one day, live bonito or chihuil the next day, and then moving on to lures the length of a man’s forearm, such as a Rapala or a Yo-Zuri magnum or Marauder.

Wahoo seem to have built-in radar for human predators, becoming skittish and fleeing when lots of boats converge. They have narrow, bony heads and jaws seemingly impervious to big hooks.

Their small teeth are wickedly sharp and have a bite like big pinking shears. They slice bait in two, destroy pricey lures and have been known to gash anglers on lure-induced leaps into boats. You catch them with steel leaders; they bite through monofilament.

Speed is the wahoo’s edge. Dragster speed. Wahoo can outrun a boat, overwhelm a fast-speed reel and empty a spoolful of line in seconds. An unprepared angler who stumbles upon a wahoo never forgets the meteor-like strike, a blistering drag scream, followed by limp line fluttering in the wind and a Mexican boat skipper snickering, “Hee hee hee ... wahoo.”

A modest 3-foot adult wahoo has been clocked at 75 mph, a staggering velocity in the dense medium of water, according to Bruce Collette of the National Marine Fisheries Service and a senior scientist at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History.

“It is one of the fastest fish in the ocean. They’re a swimming machine. It’s astonishing how fast they can go,” Collette says.

But wahoo are sprinters, and their eye-popping “burst speed” is short-lived. Unlike tuna, wahoo have more white muscle tissue than red, which depletes glycogen rapidly, zapping endurance. Beating a wahoo requires a solid and rapid hook set, keeping line tight during zoom-zoom time until the fish flames out.

The cult of wahoo

Joining the cult of wahoo exacts a dear price: lots of flights to tropical destinations, rod and reel combos worth $1,000 apiece and lures, lots of lures, each costing $30 and routinely trashed. It is, in other words, an obsession.

In Southern California, acolytes often converge on a popular place of worship, Lincoln-Pico Sporting Goods in Santa Monica, which opened in 1946 and hasn’t changed much since then. They come to trade battle stories.

“The wahoo angler doesn’t care about any other fish in the ocean. It’s the only fish they care about,” says proprietor Paul Killian, as he knots up 90-pound wire leaders for an upcoming trip. “Wahoo have a mystique. It’s a strange fish, and the anglers that fish for them are a very select group.”

Among that group is Pat Walsh of Venice. Walsh owns $5,000 in tackle, has fished all his life and has targeted wahoo for the last 20 years. He jets to Baja five times a year hoping someday to land a 100-pound fish (the world record, a 158.8-pound beast, was caught up the coast in the Sea of Cortes near Loreto in 1996).

“Anyone can throw a couple handfuls of sardines in the water and catch tuna all day long,” Walsh says, “but that’s not going to happen with wahoo.”

Or Malibu expat Eric Brictson, who moved to Mexico in 1985 to start a wahoo fishing service from La Playita, the beach nearest the rich wahoo haunts of the East Cape and Gordo Banks. He once saw a 70-pound wahoo lunge at a 50-pounder and slice it in two as he held the smaller fish aloft with a gaff. Another time, he watched a wahoo vault across the stern of a panga and thrash a feathered lure dangling from a rod in midair.

“It was like flying a kite, and all these feathers were raining down on us,” Brictson says. “It was chaos, but we got that fish in. Hey, that’s wahoo fishing.”

Or Charlie Klug of Malibu. Klug has spent the last 25 years fishing for wahoo in Mexico and South America, haunted by the memory of one fish.

“This one fish hit and took 75 yards of line in just a couple seconds, then stopped and took 75 more, then stopped and took 75 more and then chewed through 360-pound wire leader. It was a triple run, and you rarely get a double run on a wahoo. Geez, that was a big fish!” Klug says. “Wahoo will make the drag on your reel make sounds you’ve never heard it make before.”

But few who gather in Killian’s store know wahoo like Dr. Wahoo.

The high priest

A lifetime of fishing has caramelized his skin. His face is stern, his hair salt-streaked and gray. He moves little and says less as the 24-foot panga putters over an undersea ridge called El Cardon. With Steve McQueen cool, he watches everything: the tides, the desert shore, the wind, leaping manta rays, the rods and lines trolling chihuil.

Browne, 53, grew up in Costa Mesa and moved to Hawaii to work on commercial fishing boats. That’s where he first learned about wahoo. When someone once showed him a map of the Gordo Banks off the southern tip of Baja, he bought a house here in 1982. Undersea mounts like these push baitfish near the surface and draw wahoo from afar.

“I fell in love with the place. It’s a blessing to see the Gordo Banks and fish them all the time,” says Browne, who later found Jesus, became pastor of the local Calvary Chapel and crafts and sells lures and paintings to make ends meet. “The Lord says, ‘Follow me and I will make you fishers of men’ ... but I still enjoy fishing. I’ve caught every kind of fish there is, from a mullet to a big marlin, but there’s no other fishing I’d rather be doing than trolling a live chihuil here.”

Even in the past when big fish were plentiful, consistent catches of wahoo were rare, but on his first fishing trip near Cabo San Lucas, Browne had a quadruple hookup on dorado followed by a triple hookup on wahoo. He had brought feathered lures in from Hawaii, knowing wahoo gobbled chihuil like gummy bears. He caught wahoo five days in a row, and on the sixth day, when he returned with another sizable catch, a German who had been drinking red wine all day approached him and said, “You hov got vahoo again today? You must be Docta Vahoo!” The nickname stuck.

The waning moon of mid-November is prime time for a late season wahoo run, but nearly an hour has passed since the last wahoo strike. Earlier, one fish massacred a chihuil bait. Another snapped a 60-pound steel leader, and another ate the steel leader and severed 40-pound monofilament.

But the lull in the action is getting to Dr. Wahoo. He has dragged baitfish, Rapalas and feathered jigs through miles of water. It’s 9:50 a.m., and bursts of Spanish chatter punctuated by “wahoo” crackle over the radio, reminding him that the fish are here. Three nearby pangas hooked and lost. Wahoo are winning, again.

“They’re very wary today,” Browne says, breaking a long silence as the sun beats on his head. “But there’s always a big momma down there who hasn’t eaten for a couple of days.”

Regresa, wahoo, regresa.

Browne grabs his custom Calstar rod with a Trinidad 20 reel and zings a blue and chrome surface iron with red eyes and prism tape far off the port side. A few cranks of the handle, and something dark and menacing bears down on the lure. A snake-like body arches on the surface and dives nose first like a crocodile followed by a big tail gyrating like a propeller. BAM!

“Oh, it’s a nice one!” Browne says, torquing the rod tight toward his chest as the line tightens piano-string taut. “He’s just swimming, cruising, not going too .... “

Suddenly, Browne’s reel sizzles. In 17 seconds, the fish has stripped off half the line on his spool, and it’s still running.

But the iron jig has no wire leader. One tail swipe, an errant chomp of teeth or another wahoo tempted to smack the hooked fish could end the battle.

Browne’s rod strains but holds firm as he begins gaining on the fish. After 20 minutes, the wahoo becomes iridescent beside the panga. Blue with dark tiger stripes, its flanks glisten as if they were steel-clad. Its tail is long and stiff but flexible like hard plastic, thrashing slower now, ever slower. The fish grinds its teeth and hammers its head side to side, gouging desperately on the metal lure. Its big eyes stare up in exhaustion as the gaff strikes hard through its flesh. It’s about 40 pounds.

“Yes!” Browne shouts. “The doctor is back in business!” He pumps his fist, exhaling hard. “Glory!”

Times staff writer Gary Polakovic can be reached at gary.polakovic@latimes

.com.