iStockphoto / Luis Beristain
A crew spearfishing in Southern Fiji shot and landed the biggest wahoo we’ve ever seen and one of the biggest wahoo ever caught whether it be with a speargun or using a rod and reel.
We dare say this could be a spearfishing world record for wahoo if they had a certified scale available. The current wahoo spearfishing world record is a 138-pound fish (62.6 kg) shot by John Pengelly in French Polynesia back in 2014. In the story below, they estimate one of the fish that got away was up to 170 pounds.
We have seen a lot of monster fish over the years but this wahoo is just built different. It’s so big it barely looks like a wahoo and once you click ‘play’ on the clip below you’ll easily see how this fish would have smashed the wahoo spearfishing record if they weighed it:
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/8qL8Bt48Sz0
According to their Instagram caption, they were specifically chasing monster wahoos in Southern Fiji. They say a ‘pair of very large fish’ came swimming by with one of them ‘noticeably bigger’ than the other.
When the larger of the two fish passed by the spearfishermen they took the shot. Clay shot the first of the two fish with a 9mm speer that struck the wahoo right behind its gill plate. The fish bolted so hard and fast that it actually snapped the stainless steel ring that connects spear’s line to the Riffe float that is used to help bring big fish up to the surface. The big fish was gone.
But then the other one, the smaller of the two fish, circled back around and Clay was able to get his 9mm spear shot off on that fish that then pulled their ’30L RA float’ down deep for 15 minutes. They say the first fish they shot actually ‘dwarfed’ this one so it is almost unimaginable how big and heavy the fish that got away was, estimating that it weighed somewhere between 150 and 170 pounds.
Epic Fish Landed In Fiji
Cameron Kirkconnell, one of the most famous people in the spearfishing industry, was along on this trip. He can be seen in the background of the video above. But he also shared some epic pictures of Dogtooth Tuna they caught on this trip in addition to the prehistoric-sized wahoo.
Cam Kirkconnell called this Dogtooth Tuna the ‘fish of a lifetime’. This one was estimated at over 130 pounds.
Dogtooth Tuna and Wahoo Spearfishing Records
For context, the IGFA fishing world record for Wahoo on rod and reel is a 184 lb 0 oz fish caught in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico in 2005 by angler Sara Hayward. That fish looked like a small submarine.
And the IGFA fishing world record for Dogtooth Tuna is 236 lb 15 oz. That fish was caught by angler Jon Patten in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania back in 2015. Dogtooth Tuna are found in the Pacific and Indian Oceans.
Just like Wahoo, the spearfishing world record for Dogtooth Tuna seems ripe for the taking. That record stands at 52kg / 114.64 lbs and that record has stood since Jean Napier shot their fish in Mozambique back in 1989. 34 years is a very long time for a record to stand, especially with all of the modern advances in the spearfishing industry.
Wahoo is undeniably one of the best tasting fish in the world. I’ve never tasted a wahoo this large, that I know of, but I have to assume the flavor would still be incredible.