You better have plenty of chum when the wahoo show up on East Coast reefs.

The school of chum baits kept swimming back and forth from the engine to the pair of hooked baits 10 yards off the stern, like a continuously flowing bait school that can’t find a comfort zone. Back and forth, and back again.

Occasionally, a sardine would panic, and the entire school would rush back to the boat, seeking sanctuary alongside the engine’s lower unit. Every few minutes, I’d gather a net full of sardines from the well, then squeeze them one at a time and toss it over the side to dance madly on the surface.

I’d just dipped some more baits, when the entire school rushed the engine and one of the flatline baits got nailed. It was almost surreal to see a wahoo over 50 pounds motionless behind the boat with a foot of steel dangling out of its mouth. Before anyone could grab the rod, the hungry ’hoo ate the other hooked bait as well.

Despite the dual sets of hooks, the fish remained fat, dumb and happy directly behind the boat as it waited for any other baits to clear the engine. When Paul Ellig struck the fish, it went ballistic, carving a surface wake for 50 yards before reversing direction and ripping past the boat.

“Wahoo!” yelled Paul. “Grab the other rod!”

Before anyone could get near the second rod, the line broke off on the engine, so it was going to be up to Paul to land the fish.

“He’s going to spool me,” was the last thing Paul said before we heard the loud snap.

“You didn’t thumb the spool, did you?” we asked.

“No, it just broke,” came the reply as Paul bit his thumb to ease the pain of the blister that was coming up.

We retied the lines and deployed two more baits, and had just tossed over the first net full of chum when a wahoo of similar size flashed wildly as it ate one of the hooked baits and doubled the rod. This time, the fish was landed, and to everyone’s surprise, it had a pair of leaders in its mouth. The same wahoo that had a face full of hooks came back for another shot at the baits, which was proof enough that these fish are suckers for live chumming.

From Palm Beach to Sebastian Inlet, and sometimes beyond, wahoo gather along reefs in August and September to take advantage of the migrating bait schools driven offshore by changing weather. Hurricane swells and coldwater upwellings from prolonged periods of west winds push schools of pilchards, threadfins, sardines and mullet away from shore where they’re an easy target for a variety of gamefish. While dolphin, kingfish and bonito are the most prevalent predators, wahoo are abundant enough to target, and the right techniques can produce multiple catches.

Structure and depth are the two keys needed to produce wahoo, with the optimum depth in the 120- to 240-foot range. Long reef lines with large peaks and valleys create the current edges wahoo utilize as feeding stations. Currents pushing water to the surface bring the bait off the bottom and away from the structure where the wahoo can consistently catch an easy meal.

The best reeflines for anchoring off the Palm Beaches run in less than 100 feet of water, while off Jupiter the good wahoo zone is normally in 80 to 142 feet. The Eight Mile Reef off Stuart, where the water drops quickly from 108 to 150 feet of water, and the famed Steeples area off Sebastian, have been known to produce trophy wahoo every fall. When fishing off Fort Pierce, be sure to make note of the Oculina Bank, which stretches from Fort Pierce north to Sebastian, and where anchoring is prohibited to protect the rare Oculina coral that forms on the reef.

As a rule, I prefer to anchor when chumming wahoo, but drift fishing is very effective, particularly on light-wind days or when the wind and current are moving against each other, allowing the boat to remain in position along the reefline. It’s fine if the boat drifts, as long as its course keeps it above the structure.

At these depths you’ll typically find strong current, so anchoring usually requires extra scope to keep the boat in place. At least 300 feet of anchor rode is standard, and I know two captains out of Jupiter who use a pair of 200-foot lines tied together with 12 feet of anchor chain. With that much line and weight, it’s essential to have an anchor ball on board to help bring up the line when it’s time to get under way.

Once the anchor is set, deploy baits immediately, just in case there’s a fish or two around and curious about the boat. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve thrown the first chum baits overboard and had a wahoo or big dolphin chase the baits away from the boat, disappear and not return. Get the hooked baits out first, then worry about the chum, so that anything that feeds will find the business end of a line.

Wahoo aren’t picky about their forage. Just about anything from a blue runner to a scaled sardine will work. During the fall mullet run, finger mullet school along the beaches and in the Intracoastal in huge numbers that are easy to catch with a small cast net. Finger mullet are excellent baits that hold up well in the livewell, but they do tend to attract sharks, so plan to break off a few blacktip or Atlantic sharpnose sharks if you use these baits.

Bait size isn’t a big factor, but I like to use the smaller baits for chumming and the larger baits for fishing, although I always have one small bait in the spread just in case the fish focus on one size. Smaller baits are also less likely to fill the belly of a wahoo, so the fish will still be interested in your hooked offerings.

Surface baits work fine for most species, but you’ll catch a lot more wahoo if you get the baits down at least a few feet. In fact, you won’t see the majority of large wahoo that you hook in the chumline. Those fish remain deep, eating baits as they dive for the reef.

You can move your baits deeper into the water column by adding a small 1/2- to 1-ounce weight to the line and pinch it down above the leader with a pair of pliers, but the best method is to hang a downrigger ball and suspend the baits at different depths.

Given a choice, I’ll suspend a bait at 40 feet and another at 20 feet, and then put out two surface baits. Even though the majority of chum remains on the surface, better than half the strikes seem to come on the deeper baits.

Once the baits are deployed, it’s time to release the chummies. Baits dropped arbitrarily over the side will often swim off from the boat never to be seen again. A large scoop of baits placed close to the transom will form a school, and swim off as a school, although several may decide to swim with the hooked baits. If you make a live-bait tether out of monofilament with four or five dropper loops and strands of copper rigging wire attached, you can run the wire through the nose or eye sockets of several baits, creating a small swimming school that’s tethered to the boat. A net load of baits will now join the tethered baits to form a school that won’t want to journey too far from the boat and won’t scatter in all directions, taking any predators that swim up to investigate the chum along with it.

Two summers ago, I had just set out the bait tether and was digging in the well for the first baits to drop over the side when I noticed the tether was gone. Thinking I must have tied a bad knot, I checked the cleat but found the line still attached. A wahoo had eaten every bait off the teaser in the minute or so it took me to scoop a net full of baits. Fortunately, the fish spun around and ate one of the flatline baits. It only weighed about 20 pounds, but had eaten six mature threadfins in less than two minutes, which is a testimony to the wahoo’s appetite and feeding abilities.

Injured baits enhance the average chumline, so I like to periodically scoop up a bunch of baits and toss them over individually after giving them a little squeeze. The injured baits flutter, flash and splash on the surface, attracting gamefish from great distances. Once the fish come into the chumline, they’ll rarely leave the easy pickings.

Anchoring isn’t always an option, particularly when there’s a strong ground swell or current, or the water is simply too deep. There are some outstanding reefs and current edges in 200 to 500 feet of water that are easier to drift using the same techniques. The advantage to drifting is the boat covers more area, thus potentially exposing the baits to more fish.

Be sure to drift along weedlines and large pieces of flotsam. This structure comes with its own food supply and certainly draws a share of wahoo. Weedlines also travel along the same current and wind patterns that your boat will follow, so it’s easy to maintain close contact.

Weed or debris also attracts small dolphin, which in turn attract wahoo. Wahoo regularly dine on schoolies, so the two are commonly found in the same locations. A lot of time small dolphin are the first to show up in your chumline, followed by a larger dolphin or wahoo.

The best floating debris for wahoo are dark objects that suspend well into the water column. Chumming around this type of debris can result in multiple catches of schooling wahoo in the 10- to 20-pound class. For example, Capt. Sam Crutchfield of Fort Pierce once caught eight wahoo over 20 pounds from a single piece of floating debris.

The average wahoo in the fall is only around 20 pounds, but fish over 50 pounds are common, so it’s a good idea to skip the spinning gear and go with the heavier conventional tackle. Thirty- to 50-pound tackle with a short trace of No. 6 wire is more than adequate to land most of the wahoo we encounter in Florida waters, but fish that push the triple-digit mark are caught every fall, so don’t feel like you’re overdoing it by going with the heavy stuff.

I’m a big fan of single-hook rigs as opposed to a stinger rig when wahoo fishing, because I feel the speed of the fish and drag of the line regularly allow it to pull a small treble hooked to the outside of its face or side. The exception to the rule is a stinger rig made with two 6/0 shortshank bait hooks. The larger hooks don’t spin on the fish like a treble hook, and are less likely to catch a fish lightly in the meat or skin and pull out on a long run.

A single 6/0 to 9/0 shortshank livebait hook or even a standard trolling hook also works fine. There’s a good argument for using circle hooks, and I’m leaning toward 7/0 circle hooks after landing several wahoo in the past year or so while fishing with monofilament leaders where the circle hooks were imbedded in the jaws of the fish and could not be removed.

Besides their awesome speed, wahoo are well known for repeatedly shaking their heads during the course of the fight. All that head shaking creates slack that lets the hook fall free. Though most wahoo anglers worry that a big wahoo will spool them, a lot more wahoo are lost right at the boat as they make a last desperate head shake that forces the angler to drop his rodtip, creating slack in the line.

A small trace of wire will certainly draw more strikes from spooked fish or fish that are leader shy in clear water. In most cases, less than two feet of wire is fine, and I don’t recommend anything lighter than a No. 5 wire just in case a big fish shows up. A big wahoo can even cut heavy wire, but it’s less likely than with a No. 3 or 4 wire that’s typically used for kingfish.

Just remember that these fish arrive, feed and depart rather quickly, so it’s important to always have a hooked bait in the water before chumming, in case the fish appear immediately after you shut down the boat. Watching a wahoo swim up and eat several baits and then swim off before you can get a hooked bait out to the fish is frustrating to say the least. But get on the reef or current edges with enough bait, and you’ll likely see more than your share of these gamefish.