By DON DUBUC

Onomatopoeia.

No, that’s not the name of some obscure fish species.

If you were paying attention in English lit class and not daydreaming about fishing in the lake, then you may recall this term. Technically, onomatopoeia (pronounced oh-no-mah-ta-pee-ah) is the forming of a word (such as “buzz,” “sizzle” or “hiss”) by imitation of a natural sound.

That’s great you say, but what does that have to do with fishing? That’s how one fish must have gotten its name. Many a Louisiana offshore angler upon setting the hook on one of those sleek, speedy fish has let out a scream of “WA-HOO” practically audible all the way back to the Venice Marina.

Wahoo, for certain is my favorite offshore species. And in late January and the whole month of February they’re usually pretty thick at a unique underwater Gulf structure known as the Midnight Lumps.

When you get about 28 miles out of Tiger Pass, you get a hint you’re close when you see anywhere from 10 to 20 commercial boats anchored and dozens of sportfishing boats trolling baits between and around them.

The commercial crews are busy chumming the waters with bloody bonito and other nasty things while the trollers are dragging magnum rapalas, halco tremblers and other flashy, vibrating plastic baitfish lookalikes.

Every now and then you hear a gunshot from the commercial boats, a sure sign a tuna too big and too dangerous to flop on the deck alive is hoisted over the railing.

The recreationals only stop trolling when they get “hooked-up.” And that’s usually announced with a lot screaming and hollering during a brief period of organized chaos. That’s winter and early springtime at the lumps.

The Midnight Lumps are appropriately named mounds of earth that reach upward to about 200 feet below the surface.

What makes this area particularly attractive to a number of species of fish is that for a half-mile stretch this “underwater hill” rises from 400-foot depths.

It’s like a serving platter for predatory pelagic species and during the winter and spring, acres of bonito swarm on the surface in feeding frenzies. The bonito with the exception of a couple of recipes that require painstaking steps to camouflage the oily and fishy taste are pretty much inedible.

The bonito’s value is its appeal to the real prize fish.

Catching the bonito for bait is a pretty good fight in itself but what most anglers are after at the “lumps” are the big three – Yellowfin tuna, blackfin tuna and wahoo. Yellowfin are the big boys going up to 200 pounds or more.

The blackfins will be in the 10-30 pound range while the wahoo can go up to 100 pounds and bigger. Tuna and wahoo fight totally different.

Big tuna dive deep and make even the strongest angler huff and puff to land ’em. Wahoo on the other hand, make one long run then several smaller ones as the near the boat.

Both are caught with heavy tackle like Penn 50 reels loaded with 70-pound test line.

There are two or three ways to fish them.

First you can “chum” the water with cut up baitfish like bonito or squid to draw the fish up and close to boat. Sometimes when it’s really good, you can actually see and cast to the fish swarming under the surface.

You can use cut bait or the big artificial plastics mentioned above. Or you can troll those same plastics at various distances behind the boat along the surface.

Some days the fish will feed but not come to the surface. That’s when a down-rigger that keeps baits at desired depths, comes in handy.

The fish will normally move in and away from the midnight lumps through May.

To find the lumps both Standard Mapping Services and Fishing Map Center of New Orleans have offshore charts of the Venice area with its location clearly marked.

DON DUBUC is the outdoors reporter for L’Observateur.