The History of Competitive Wahoo Fishing

Former United Sates Congressman Adam Clayton Powell first set foot in Bimini in 1963. According to historian Ashley Saunders, “Powell became an expert at catching Wahoo and around the docks he was called “The Wahoo King”. The average number of Wahoo that he caught per day was 15. After each day of fishing day was over, Powell would shout to his friends “The Wahoo King is here and he’s ready to pl0ay with the domino”. Then he would head to the End of The World Bar” in Alice Town where he would order the bar a round of drinks, a scotch and milk for himself, and beat everyone at domino!

After his death in 1972, his love for Wahoo fishing was carried on by the Bimini Progressive Sporting Club when they established and ran for many years The Wahoo Tournament. This was always a wild and wooly affair, held in November of each year, and forget the weather…it was always “good Wahoo weather”. And it was under these circumstances and background that the modern day Wahoo angler was born. Cocky, braving all elements in pursuit of a fish which is known as the fastest game fish in the ocean, rocking and rolling all day, fishing hard and then coming in to a weigh-in on an Island where Hemingway once called home, no wonder this created a certain swagger amongst the Wahoo anglers, knowing that they were walking where the great once walked.

The title of “The Wahoo King” was passed on to Captain Bob Smith, a Biminite and captain of “Miss Bonita II”. Captain Bob became the local Wahoo expert and developed his own techniques of trolling the edges of the drop-offs, utilizing two wire lines for deep trolling and rigging ballyhoos and feather lures to troll on the outriggers. Captain Bob was a “slow troller “, and he would constantly fish the waters between Bimini and Cat Cay. Anglers such as Raul Miranda and Ed Hardin learned their Wahoo catching techniques from Captain Bob and won numerous Wahoo tournaments with Captain Bob at the helm.

By now, the Bimini Big Game Fishing Club had established a very strong tournament program for competitive big game fishing, including such tournaments as the Bacardi Rum Billfish Tournament, the Tuna Tournament and the Light Tackle Tournament. It was only natural that by mutual consent that the Big Game Club would take over the Wahoo tournament and maintain the tradition of competitive Wahoo fishing on the Island.

Once again, there were new “King’s of Wahoo” to be crowned in Bimini and these new Champions hailed from the Island of Bermuda. Captains Buddy De Silva, Allan De Silva, Allan Card, and Dean Jones were invited to fish the Bimini Wahoo tournaments and they gladly came, bringing with them some very exciting new fishing techniques which would revolutionize the art of catching Wahoo. Quite simply, these captains brought with them a technique which they had developed in Bermuda, and that was the art of “high speed trolling”. High speed trolling was not simply driving the boat at a high rate of speed. It meant keeping the lures in the water (i.e. the advent of plastic lures) and being able to present them to the fish regardless of weather conditions. High speed trolling brought with it the advent of covering a lot of ground in search of Wahoo in a relatively short period of time.

Results of early Wahoo tournaments at the Bimini Big Game Fishing Club

1987	Raul Miranda,	Raul jr	John Ingham		"Miss Bonita II"
1988	Raul Miranda,	Raul jr	John Ingham	Ed Hardin	"Miss Bonita II"
1989	Henry De Silva				"Big Blue"
1990	Henry De Silva				"Liquid Asset
1991	Dan Peyerk				"Chardan"

Other notable Wahoo anglers of that era were Ed Hardin, “Abracadabra”, Jim Roberts and Tom Burke, “Captain Video”, Nino Martini on “Tiramisu” and Tom Malone, “Justice”

The brainchild on the current Bahamas Wahoo Championship is Tom Malone, an angler from Atlanta, Georgia who has fished the Bahamas for over thirty years. Tom was one of the early Wahoo fishermen and aficionado of the species and the sport. He really enjoys Wahoo fishing and in an effort to further promote the concept of competitive Wahoo fishing he contacted the legendary Penny Turtle who at that time was the tournament and social director at the Abaco Beach Resort in Boat Harbour, The Bahamas. The concept was simple. Let’s extend the Wahoo tournaments from Bimini and visit other areas and resorts of the Bahamas. Tom and Penny contacted Raul Miranda and the three of them worked together to create the Bahamas Wahoo Championship.

The first year of the Bahamas Wahoo Championship, in its present format, took place in 1997-1998. Five tournaments were scheduled over a four month period, two in Bimini, one in Freeport, one in Marsh Harbour and one in Eleuthera. The first winner of the new Bahamas Wahoo Championship was Joe De Paola’s “Concrete Machine”, a 72’ Donzi. The “Concrete Machine” won three out of the five legs.

The Awards ceremony was coordinated by Maura Brassil of the Bahamas Family Island Promotion Board and a black tie affair was held at the Biltmore Hotel in Coral Gables, Florida, the evening prior to the start of the Miami Boat Show. For the next several years the Awards ceremony was always held on the night before the Miami International Boat Show, always a black tie optional affair and held at the Grand Bay Hotel in Coconut Grove, Miami and the Intercontinental Hotel, Miami. These were truly grand affairs, attended by all of the members of the sport fishing media in town for the Boat Show and by the Prime Minister and Minister of Tourism of the Bahamas and other dignitaries.

The 1998-1999 series saw the advent of Captain Ron Schatman who brought with him a perfected skill of “ultra high speed trolling” and covering huge amounts of fishing grounds in a relatively short period of time. Ronnie showed everyone that they could run as fast and as far as they wanted, as long as they were back past the terminator line on time. He skippered Mark Weiner’s “Wizards”, a 43’ Viking to the overall Championship.

All of this time, Duane Gossett, owner of “Double Eagle”, practiced and practiced and practiced. He and his crew acquired all of their Wahoo catching skills by continuously practicing during the “of season” and by carefully mapping and tracking all of their catches. They truly started from scratch and their tenacity in improving their Wahoo catching skills paid off when they won the overall Bahamas Wahoo Championship in the 1999-2000 series.

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The next two seasons were extremely competitive. Ronnie Schatman won in 2000-2001 with Jim Montgomery on “Sorry Dear”. Duane Gossett came right back in 2001-2002 and won with “Double Eagle”. It is seldom that one can witness the skills of two such great Wahoo captains trading the lead in some very close competitions, oftentimes settled by less than a five pound differential. These were truly exciting times in the Championship, two great captains trading the lead during four exciting years.

Dale Jacobs won the Championship in 2002-2003 in his “Double Down”.

The 2003-2004 Championship ushered in the era of “extreme” high speed trolling and fishing. Billy Thomas introduced an even faster technique of covering a wide range of the fishing grounds and when they arrived at their preferred site the crew of “Rebekka Lynn” would troll at blazing speeds. “Rebekka Lynn “won the Championship that year.

Captain Sef Stuparoff guided Roger Rex’s “Scatterbrain” for the overall win in the 2004-2005 Championship while Peter Hynes and Bahamian legend Peter Rose combined their skills to win the 2005-2006 event on the Freeport, Bahamas based “Predator”.

Another Bahamian based boat, this one out of Nassau, Bahamas, "The Zephyros" owned by Basil Goulandris won the 2006-2007 in a very tight competition.

Billy Thomas returned to the winners circle in the 2007-2008 Championship series winning with “Savannah Lynn”.

The 2008-2009 series saw an extremely close competition between Dan Riggs’s “Llangus” and Marshall Leeds’s “Svengali. Only eight points separated the two boats as they entered the final leg and in the end it was Dan Riggs and “Llangus”, a Freeport, Bahamas based boat captained by Captain Kurt that won the event. Marshall Leeds’s and “Svengali” were right up there with them until the final weigh-in of the final day.

The 2008-2009 Bahamas Wahoo Championship was limited to boats with inboard engines only.

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