By FRED BONNER

Any time you’re planning an offshore fishing trip, it pays to pay close attention to the weather forecast. We did that last week and picked a day that promised relatively calm and sunny water off Morehead City. The wahoo had been reported to be in good numbers just to the south of the famed Big Rock. If they followed their normal migration pattern they’d be moving to the south.

When everything was considered, Capt. Tom Savitski set our course for the Swansboro Hole as we motored out from Beaufort Inlet. Light was beginning to break in the east and the seas were relatively calm. The stars were out and as far as we could see there were no clouds in the sky.

Savitski’s boat is a very well equipped 31-foot Grady White Freedom powered with two 300 horsepower Yamaha four-strokes. It’s capable of speeds up to 50 miles per hour. We cruised out at a more comfortable speed of 45 MPH as we headed offshore on a heading of about 185 degrees was set on the autopilot. Hopes were high as Jerry Smith (Tom’s uncle) and I sat back and enjoyed the ride. As we progressed along on our trip we estimated that the seas were now in the 3-4 foot range, which were no problem at all in our boat.

When we were about halfway into the ride out, we began to notice an unusual looking black cloud on the horizon to our south. The closer we got to it the more it looked like it might bring a little rain to our trip. It also seemed that the closer we got to the black cloud, the bigger the waves were getting.

When our autopilot finally announced that we were at our mark, we estimated that the seas had increased to about the 5-6 foot level. It was beginning to get a little “bouncy.” The ominous looking black cloud seemed to be set-in just a little to our east now and was showing some signs of rain at its darkest center.

Savitski had personally rigged his medium sized ballyhoo rigs. They were smaller than the ones he’d been using previously because they’d been missing some strikes from wahoo when the fish bit off the tails off the larger ballyhoos and didn’t manage to get their mouths up into the hook. The smaller baits might be easier for our target fish to swallow completely and enable the hook to embed itself into jawbone.

We set out six trolling lines and started our fishing just after 8:30 and sat back to see if Capt. Tom’s prediction of a successful trip was to hold true. We didn’t wait long because the first rod went down within about 15 minutes. We were into our first fish of the day. With all the excitement of the first fish of the day, we scarcely noticed that the waves had increased to maybe the 5 or 6-foot levels.

Out first wahoo had hit on the smallest of all the rods that Tom had set out. It took about 10 minutes to bring the fish alongside to be gaffed. The fish had fought deep-down ­— hard like a tuna without any of the usual reel screaming runs that usually characterize that a wahoo’s on the line. When we finally got our first look at the fish, Tom yelled; “My gosh it’s a monster wahoo. Get the gaff quick.”

The fish locker on the stern of the “Reel Pirate” is four-feet-long and the wahoo couldn’t fit in it, no matter how much we bent it around. We quickly reverted to the larger fish box in the bow section before resuming our fishing.

We now noticed that our lurking black cloud was closer. The waves were getting bigger. There was still no rain for us, though.

For several hours we trolled around the edges of the black cloud without another strike. The only other boats in the area were the well-known charter boat the “Bill Collector” and a smaller center console with three anglers on board. All three boats were now experiencing seas estimated at the 7 to 8 foot range. So much for the forecast of “calm seas.”

In frustration, Capt. Tom decided to let the GPS guide us back to the exact spot where our “monster wahoo” had struck. There was a small “hump” there that showed some fish on the sonar and maybe it could be the ”hotspot.”  It didn’t take long for Tom’s decision to go back to the very same spot where we began our search for wahoo to begin to troll again. Within the next hour we took a 30-40 pound amberjack and managed to put another large wahoo in the fish box.

The black cloud had stayed in the area the entire time we were fishing in the Big Rock area. It seemed to never move, yet we experienced no rain. The seas were now estimated to be in the 10 to 11 foot range. Even for a seaworthy 31-foot boat, we were taking a beating. We decided to follow in his wake and head home when we observed the much larger “Bill Collector” turn and start heading for Beaufort Inlet.

We had a rough time headed in to port, even with the “Bill Collector” breaking up the waves in front of us. When we sighted land off Cape Lookout, the waves began to subside. We sped up to cruising speed in the “Reel Pirate” and wove our way in through lots of smaller craft fishing for bluefish and croakers off Beaufort and Morehead.

In harbor at the Radio Island Marina, a small crowd gathered around to compare catches. It seems that we were the big catch-of-the-day winners. Our largest wahoo was estimated to weigh about 50 pounds.

Maybe all the “calm seas” the weather forecasters had predicted was for the inshore area. Our black cloud had remained near us for the entire day that we were fishing. The offshore seas were vicious but we had a day to remember fishing on the Big Rock.