By Misty Wells:
If you can think of a better way to start the New Year than going fishing for wahoo with Jimmy Houston in the British Virgin Islands, then I want to hear about it.
Picking Jimmy up at 5 a.m. to head to the Tampa Airport, it was hard for me to believe that in 30 years of traveling the planet to fish, Jimmy had never been to the British Virgin Islands (BVI). Of course, this was my first trip to the BVI as well, and filming with Jimmy is pretty much any angler’s dream come true. Getting to the BVI was pretty quick and easy, and once we arrived in Tortola the Film Commission and locals rolled out the red carpet for “America’s Favorite Fisherman” and me with a warm welcome.
Next stop: the Scrub Island Resort & Marina. Not to be outdone, Owner Gary Eng and Capt. Tommy LaRonge picked us up at the airport aboard the Ruckus, a Viking 61 we would be fishing on for the next three days. Ok, I am not going to lie. I am not used to the star treatment, but I could get to liking it pretty quickly. Pulling up to the resort, you realize even the beautiful photos can’t do it justice. Scrub Island is one of a kind… a bucket-list destination. After a great dinner while listening to the steel drum band, we all decided to head to our rooms knowing Capt. Tommy had big plans for the next day.
We had been watching the weather and knew it was going to be about 6 to 8 foot offshore with pretty high winds. But that was OK. As I told Jimmy, wahoo like it rough. That morning we were heading out to work the North Drop, which would consist of high-speed trolling about 13 knots back and forth across the 50- to 100-fathom depth contour. World records are set on this drop, so you never know what is going to be on the end of your line. Jimmy and I both post our catches on FishBrain, so we were anxious to get the party started and give our followers something to see. About two hours into it, a reel started to scream. Three hundred yards of line were gone in an instant. This fish was a beast!
Jimmy jumped into action, grabbed the rod and began battling his first wahoo. Anyone who has caught a wahoo knows they don’t come easy, and a beast this size was not going to give up without a fight. Jimmy was on this fish for about 45 minutes. As he got the wahoo close, an 8-foot hammerhead showed up at the back of the boat waiting for Jimmy to feed him lunch. It was a race against nature at this point, and Jimmy and the crew threw it into high gear. With gaffs in hand, Bo and Tommy waited for their only shot to get this monster into the boat before it was bitten in half. They nailed it! Both guys pulled the possible record wahoo over the rail.
The looks on everyone’s faces were priceless as we all realized this wahoo was easily bigger than 100 pounds. It took some doing, but somehow we fit Jimmy’s fish in the deck box and iced it down. Shortly after, I came in second with a respectable 42-pound wahoo, but of course it looked quite small next to Jimmy’s.
After taking a beating from rough seas for three hours, we decided to head inshore after yellowtail. We broke out the spinning rods, cut bait and got to fishing. Capt. Tommy had put us on the sweet spot because almost instantly we are reeling in some huge yellowtail snapper, some upwards of 5 pounds. They had caught some African pompano a few days before, so we were hopeful they might show up as well.
It became a contest. Every time I caught a big, healthy yellowtail, Jimmy would trump me with a bigger one. I learned pretty quickly that trying to out-fish Jimmy is impossible. I may be a decent fisherman, but Jimmy has been blessed with the gift of thinking like a fish. Toward the end of the day, Jodi, our cameraman’s wife, picked up a rod to try her hand at catching a few, and low and behold she caught my African pompano. She landed that fish like a pro and made sure she caught the only pompano of the day.
All in all at that spot, we caught and released nine different species of beautiful fish. Incredible. Keep an eye out for this episode, which will air on NBC Sports, JHL Network and Outdoor Channel.
It was a day of fishing Jimmy nor I will ever forget, for different reasons. Jimmy caught his first wahoo, and it was the fish of a lifetime. I was able to be there with him when it happened. On the way back in, Jimmy turned to me and said, “By the way, Misty, did you know that all the wahoo I have caught have been over 100 pounds?” He followed up with his famous laugh. Spoken like a true fisherman.
Misty Wells is an outdoor writer and host of “Let’s Take It Outside” TV and radio show. See her website at www.mistywells.com.