Perhaps too little, too late? Despite the inclement and very wet weather of the last week or so, a few brave souls have ventured offshore and did not return empty-handed. A couple of respectable hauls have been made, at least by commercial boats.

These have consisted of wahoo and although the quality of the fish was not what one might expect for this time of the year, there was some compensation in numbers with eights and nines figuring in the returns. The average wahoo was probably in the low twenties, but together they added up to around two hundred pounds, a marketable figure; especially at a time of the year when fresh product is scarce.

With the frigate mackerel even being less than touted, the dearth of robins has also contributing to making live-baiting pretty much a non-starter, so it has been a reversion to time and tried techniques. Break out the frozen garfish, happily imported from the bait suppliers in Florida to ensure consistency and availability and get rigging.

The standard pin rig, single or double hooked, garfish is the norm, the world over for blue water species and so it was back to such that has caught most of the wahoo recently taken here. Fished either natural or dressed up with a Sea Witch® or other feature or plastic enhancement, these rigged baits can be fished on the flat, from outriggers or on deep trolls where they seem to really get the wahoo’s attention.

Actually, for most people the term “deep troll” is a bit of a misnomer. A look at one of the more common set-ups will have you believing that you are trolling at 60 or even 120 feet below the surface. This is definitely not the case for the way we troll.

The equipment was developed for lake trollers seeking large lake trout and other species. That sort of trolling is very slow and the deep trolls do take the lure down pretty deep, often employing planes and other gadgets to get the lure even deeper.

Here, the trolling is at eight knots or more and the angler of the line from the deep troll to the weight is often quite close to parallel with the water’s surface. The use of heavier balls (the usual one supplied is nominally eight pounds so some anglers use twelve pound balls) increases the angler but not by all that much. The net effect is that the bait is often running just a few feet below the surface and, in many cases, can be seen by an observer from the flying bridge. What a deep troll does here is, in effect, keep the bait in the water; accomplishing what very heavy lead-headed Japanese feathers were used for in the good old days.

In any case, trolling standard rigged baits can and will gets strikes and there seem to be enough wahoo around that are willing to please to make the effort worth while.

This is where things get a mite difficult. It has less to do with the fish than the weather and more to do with other diversions. The latter are shore-based for weekenders and it is the lobsters that have captured the attention of the commercial operators.

The high value return on lower fuel costs make the lobstering an attractive alternative to dragging all over the ocean in the hope of eliciting enough strikes to make a day’s pay after costs. Some days that works, some days it doesn’t. Through in the fact that there may be two or more crew to provide for and the economics alter considerably.

Bottom bouncing is an option but this is best carried out on the Banks which means more fuel and what could amount to a long day, with no promises of a decent return.

Gone are the days when a few hours working the bottom would produce a cooler full of hinds, bonitas, monkey rockfish and several buckets full of coneys and other lesser creatures. The fact of the matter is that there simply aren’t as many fish out there as there used to be and anyone who believes otherwise has been seriously misled.

There are a few old hands around who can still tell of the days when pots or handlining on the Banks yielded up massive numbers of rockfish, groupers and the so-called ‘floating fish” amberjack and bonitas, all of great quality. Although some might be quick to use the “over fishing” comment, a bit of common sense needs to be applied.

First off, even in the 1950’s virtually all the fish were caught and maintained in fish ponds until required or sold as fresh alive and then butchered, be it at the Flagpole or at dockside. The reason for this is incredibly obvious but is probably a bit of a surprise to a more youthful audience. Simply, there wasn’t much in the way of refrigeration, much less freezing. Fresh fish was exactly that, fresh.

Second, fish was a main food source for the Island. It was not really all that long ago that many of today’s houses and other developments were farmland, producing food for Bermudians. Similarly, the fishermen’s catches were not squandered, nor did they supply some massive foreign market overseas. The fish and produce were mostly consumed locally.

It only takes a bit of research to realise how much the population increased (something like 70+percent between 1950 and 2010), consequently food demand increased from locals but included in that time period was the boom in tourism that meant that there were lots of hungry tourists as well.

Where the problem arose was largely from the fact that the fishing grounds around the Island were already at full exploitation and the basically reef-dwelling species that were the target species could only reproduce at whatever rate Mother Nature intended. Thus it was inevitable that other species, such as parrotfish, that had not figured in fishermen’s catches become the new target species.

Ultimately this came to an end with the fish pot ban in 1990 and the adoption of new protected species regulations. It was really only at that point that the focus shifted to the pelagic species that now comprise the mainstay of the local fishery. Throw in a new awareness of more exotic cuisine and menus that include things like salmon, tilapia and a variety of shrimp, and the seafood importation business really started to boom. In a nutshell, the entire transformation of the Bermuda fishery and the culture surrounding it changed in little more than fifty years; within many a lifetime.

And that is where we are today. As sport fishermen have almost always concentrated on the pelagic game species, they are now in direct competition with many commercial operators for the blue water species. This is not a problem when the fish are abundant and there is more than enough for all. Problems arise when the recreational catches start to influence the commercial market and, when there aren’t enough fish to go around. Such circumstances can give new meaning to Tight lines!!!