Due to their large size, fighting ability and flesh quality, wahoo
are valuable to recreational fisheries and are both targeted and
taken incidentally by recreational fishers targeting billfish and tuna.
They are generally caught by line fishing with baits and artificial
lures, but are also taken by spear fishing. Extensive recreational
fisheries exist for wahoo in the United States, throughout the
Caribbean, in many South American countries, and most nations
throughout the Western and Central Pacific Ocean (Henry and Lyle,
2003; Oxenford et al., 2003; Whitelaw, 2003). There are few data
regarding participation rates, fishing effort and total catch from
most recreational fisheries worldwide, and fisheries that catch
wahoo suffer from similar deficiencies. One example from the
Atlantic coast of the United States estimated average annual recreational
catch of wahoo between 1984 and 2000 as 393 t. Given
that the average commercial catch was
∼30 t for the same region
and period (SAMC, 2003), this illustrates that recreational catch
of wahoo may greatly add to the total fishing mortality in some
regions.