Wahoo Off Newport: El Niño 2026 Just Handed SoCal a Unicorn
You can feel it in the water this year. Yellowtail stacked. Dorado showing. Bluefin still in the mix. Marlin along the Newport-to-Dana drop-off. And this morning, the one fish that still makes the whole harbor stop and stare.
A wahoo.
Capt. Peter Bonin and deckhand Bennett Henward left Newport Harbor late morning aboard the Hanuman for what was supposed to be a gentleman’s midday marlin troll. Slack high was right around noon. They made a tack south along that drop-off outside Newport toward Dana Point — the same stretch that had been lighting up with marlin reports for a day or two. Colorful lures in the spread. Classic SoCal billfish setup.
Then the Talica 16 went off.
Not a polite click. A dump. Before they even had time to settle into the chair, that fish had them down to the last few turns of line. That’s a wahoo for you. They don’t pose. They don’t circle. They leave. Good angling and a 2-inch gaff put it in the boat, and when they spun it around in front of the Fun Zone, there it was — long, silver, toothy, and completely out of place in a Newport Harbor photo.
That’s not a Mexico long-range souvenir. That’s a fish that swam into our backyard.
John “JD” Doughty out of JD’s Big Game Tackle on Balboa Island put the word out this morning, and if anybody on this coast knows when a catch actually matters, it’s JD. He’s been the Newport Harbor big-game guy for decades — the little shop on South Bay Front that is half tackle store, half museum, and all business when the marlin and tuna are running. When JD says “Wahoooo,” you pay attention.
Here’s why this one hits different.
Wahoo are tropical speedsters. Baja. Cabo. Hawaii. Panama. They belong in water that feels like summer all year. Southern California gets them only when the ocean goes sideways. The last time this coast really saw a pulse of them was the big warm-water years around 2014–2015. A few fish off Newport. An 84-pounder outside Dana Point. Then they vanished again. This August a San Diego boat put one on deck and the whole fleet started whispering the same sentence: El Niño has struck.
Now it’s September 16, and a private boat leaving Newport at 11 a.m. for marlin just gaffed one on the local drop-off.
That’s El Niño 2026 doing exactly what the warm-water years do. It pushes the whole food chain north. Bait. Dorado. Yellowfin. Striped marlin. Sierra. And every now and then, the unicorn — the fish that makes a Tuesday midday trip look like a Cabo highlight reel. We’ve been saying it all summer: this is the best local fishing in decades. This wahoo is the exclamation point.
Congrats to Capt. Peter Bonin, Bennett Henward, and the Hanuman. That’s a fish you’ll talk about for the rest of your life. And a reminder to every angler from Seal Beach to San Diego — if you’re going out right now, don’t leave the “probably never gonna need it” gear in the garage. The ocean is running hot, the drop-offs are alive, and SoCal is writing a season we won’t see again for a long time.
Check http://friedmanadventures.com for Captain’s audios, landing and boat counts, bait availability, Friedman Adventures AI, kids corner, and a whole lot more.
Still time to fish with us this Friday, September 18, on the Estella out of Hooks Landing in Oxnard — morning half-day AND evening twilight. Call (805) 382-6233 or go to http://hookslanding.net. Come see what El Niño 2026 is putting in the box.
Wahoooo, Southern California.
— Phil Friedman Friedman Adventures http://friedmanadventures.com
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