WOW, here it is; we are in 2009! A whole new year with plenty of prospects in everything with just about anything possible awaiting us. Predicting the future is an uncertain business at best with the most reliable indicators being the past. And while memories may fade quickly as time passes so fleetingly, it is always worth taking a few minutes to reflect on the year that was. So here in a nutshell is the past year revisited. As the financial people advise, past performance may not be representative of what the future holds, but anyway, here goes!

The success story of 2008 had to be wahoo and more wahoo. There were a few wahoo available throughout the winter months and then the action started to pick up toward the end of March. And did it pick up! Not only were numbers good but the quality of the fish was nothing short of outstanding.

The average weight of wahoo in most places in the world is somewhere in the 'teens or low 20-pound range. Here, the average is considerably higher. While we do get plenty of summertime "lizards" we also get a fair supply of fish in the 25-35 pound class and a good percentage of the season's catch are even larger.

This past spring the run consisted of decent fish with 20-30 pounders being the norm rather than the exception with some fish going into the 50 to 60-pound range. When dealing with averages, it often doesn't take too many larger fish to really up the numbers and that was definitely the case here this year.

As the summer replaced the spring, the wahoo eased off a bit but never to the point where a reasonable haul could be made on almost any given day. They even provided a bit of a surprise in the annual Bacardi Rum Tournament when they were by far the dominant species. This event usually sees yellowfin tuna making up the bulk of the catch but this was not the case in 2008.

This happy situation continued through until August when things finally fell into the summer malaise. As September beckoned, the wahoo once again started (or was it continued?) to do their thing, making this year's Mid-Ocean News Wahoo Tournament one of the most successful ever, both in terms of numbers and quality of fish.

The disappointment for the year had to be the failure of the yellowfin tuna to show up in any numbers. Normally, by June there isn't anywhere around the Banks that a few handfuls of chum won't bring up a few Allisons. This year it just wasn't that way. The dearth of tuna made it a hot commodity for commercial fishermen but even they failed to have any major success. The best reports came from hauls that consisted of three or four school-sized fish with very few really nice large fish being taken. Many of these came about as a result of billfish effort with the tuna crashing lures meant for blue marlin.

The lack of tuna did much to redirect fishing effort. As a result of the reduced emphasis on chumming, the "other" tuna species, the blackfin, did not figure in too many catches. Most often when trying for yellowfin, the establishment of a chumline even slightly shallower than desirable will lure blackfins into the slick and so they often figure as part of a mixed bag with the target yellowfin. With no yellowfin, the chumming effort was more directed at catching robins or other potential live baits.

The benefit to chumming for bait species usually meant that the ambers and bonitas were likely to figure in most catches and 2008 was a good year for these battlers that are so popular both in sporting terms and for table fare.

The big news fish – the billfish – made their mark on the local angling scene in a positive sense even though the fish did not seem to be as plentiful as usual. In the back of one's mind is the nagging question as to whether or not the lack of a concentration of yellowfin had anything to do with the numbers and size of the billfish, because it does seem that they tended to be more on the move than settling in to patrol the local area for any length of time. But there is no question that they were here and made their presence known, often behind boats that were not looking for them.

In the three-leg Bermuda Triple Crown a total of 188 billfish were caught with only eight being brought to the weigh station. All of these eight were over the 500 pounds minimum with the largest bettering 800 pounds. A good performance but not as outstanding as in some of the previous years. Perhaps surprisingly, there were a lot of white marlin caught alongside the blues throughout the June to August billfish season. Maybe it was the cooler than normal water that persuaded them to stay and, conversely, kept some of the blues away.

Another explanation that could well combine several factors was the passage of Hurricane Bertha in mid-July. This obviously mixed up the water causing all sorts of environmental changes, the real extent of which will never be known. Certainly, hurricanes, even "little" ones, take heat from the water and this can, in turn, affect other biological processes. On the simplest level, the bad weather kept boats in and this means that there was reduced effort which could, in part, account for the reduced numbers.

Other species were, for the most part, predictable. The small game species like mackerel, rainbow runner and the barracuda were there in about the sort of quantities one would expect. On a positive note there seemed to be more dolphin than usual, with many of these larger than we normally catch them. A stroke of good luck for those fortunate enough to have caught a dolphin or two last year.

Pulling away from the past and turning to face the promise of 2009, the angling is just now settling into its lowest levels. Effort put in by sports fishers will be at its annual low for the next couple of months and even the commercial operators will spend a lot less time afloat and even a smaller portion of those hours fishing for the blue water game species.

Weatherwise,there will be some good days ahead but with the holidays behind us now and the return to work imminent for most, there will be little time to consider the possibility of a day on the briny. As the days grow longer (yes, they really are!), most of the angling action will be in people's minds and those will almost always involve Tight lines!!!