The weather has very little effect on whether or not there is any angling this weekend, or next for that matter! This is when social responsibilities take over and the holiday season spawns plenty of those.

Not to mention the winter weather pattern, which, while a nuisance most of the time, is really quite reliable. Give it a day or two to blow, then the wind will swing around and drop out; go north and calm, then slowly make its way around the clock, as it were, gradually increasing in intensity.

So, there are those hours when it is calm, before the next blow. Predictable but maybe not when you want it: all too often during the hours of darkness or on a day that you simply have to go to work. Anyway, none of this is a problem right now; just about everyone has too many pressing things to do before December 25.

Even if you do somehow wiggle out of the holiday net, just what is the best strategy to adopt?

Happily, there always seem to be a few wahoo around. Although they are by definition a tropical species, it does not seem to get cold enough around here to totally dissuade them. In fact, there are those who believe that they actually put up a better battle when the water temperature is lower. This is hard to credit, as wahoo are fish and fish are known to be cold-blooded. That, in and of itself, could warrant a bit of explanation: what it really means is that the animal does not internally regulate its body temperature to any fixed number.

That body temperature is largely decided by the temperature of the water surrounding it, so that a coldwater fish will have a body temperature considerably less than a fish that inhabits tropical waters. This does not sound important, but it does have some implications worth thinking about.

Amazing as it may seem, just about every physical function of a living organism is based in a chemical reaction. It actually boggles the mind — just thinking is a whole string of chemical processes that are, at best, poorly understood even by the most advanced scientists. On a slightly lower level comes muscular movement, a bit better understood but way beyond the average layman (and most do not really want to know!).

One aspect that does make some sense is the effect of temperature on chemical reactions: warmer is faster. Think about using some auto-body filler or other epoxy. Once the hardener is mixed in and the chemistry starts, the stuff gets warm, even hot, if you put too much in. The bottom line is that chemical reactions are faster when it is warmer.

Obviously, in living things there are limits, otherwise all kinds of creatures would be bursting into flames all around us. Most biochemical reactions, while affected by temperature, take place at temperatures within a fairly narrow range. That pretty much provides the basis for where things live.

While there are exceptions, most things live in temperatures that we would call habitable, if not ideal. Below freezing is not good and over 100F or so is also not a good idea. Really advanced animals like mammals (that’s us, by the way) have innate warming (think of shivering as a way to warm up) and cooling (try sweating) systems to keep them in the more or less optimal range.

While that is fine for the so-called warm-blooded animals, cold–blooded ones pretty much have to go along with what Nature has dealt them. There are some adaptations: large size for one (think polar bear, who also happens to be a warm-blooded mammal) but, for the most part, colder means slower. For this reason, a wahoo in the colder water of its range is unlikely to have faster or better muscle contractions than it would in warmer water.

Naturally, there are a few measures to confuse things. Species such as bluefin tuna, which routinely enter cold waters, have some other developments that increase their overall efficiency. While they lack the thermostats that mammals have — if you ever think about it; it is amazing that almost regardless of conditions, the human body temperature remains a steady 98.6F! — tuna do have a trick or two up their sleeves.

Remember that muscular reactions produce heat. Part of this is an interesting adaptation to their circulatory system that allows for some heat exchange from warmed but deoxygenated blood coming from muscles that have been used to freshly oxygenated blood en route to the same muscles. This rise in temperature has the effect of increasing the chemical efficiency and that, in turn, improves the overall muscle efficiency, thereby making the tuna somewhat warmer-blooded than other fish.

Given that the wahoo is part of the mackerel group, which is close to the tuna families, there may well be some similar arrangement in that species. Of course, Nature would have had much less reason to allow for such a system simply because the wahoo is supposed to restrict its movements to semi-tropical and tropical waters, all of which are warm in comparison with the world’s colder seas.

Just where Bermuda fits into that equation is debatable. On the face of it, the offshore never really gets too cold, with 65F probably as low as it goes. Despite what weather reports say, it can’t get ridiculously cold here because the coral reef survives from one year to the next and they pretty much die off at temperatures below 61F. Not exactly freezing.

The other species that is considered tropical, but which often is found here through the winter and may please even now, is the yellowfin tuna. Most textbooks give their temperature range from 65F to 80F-plus and this would fit the local scenario throughout the year.

So, the deal is this: if you can manage a couple of hours out, a quick drag along the nearest drop-off is a good bet. There should be a resident wahoo or two cruising along just on the off-chance. With any luck, you should be rewarded with a strike and, hopefully, you will make that count and a wahoo will find its way into the fish box. This is an eminently better return than spending several hours bottom-bouncing to scare up a few pounds of bottom fish.

The East End is leaking stories of some concentration of yellowfin tuna that are willing to please. Given the edge’s proximity to land, it may be worth rushing out there and tossing some chum into the water. Again, even a solo tuna provides more edible fish than a dozen bottom fish, especially if time is at a premium, which is likely to be the case at this late juncture. If the tide is inclement, well, there should be the odd wahoo down there as well. The trick here is some speedy Tight Lines!!!