on-o-mato-poe-ia, n: the forming of a word (as "buzz" or "hiss") in imitation of a natural sound.

Yes, Mr. Webster your definition of this unusual word answers the question of how Acanthocybium solandri got its more common name. Many a Louisiana offshore angler upon setting the hook on one has let out a scream of WAHOO practically audible all the way back to the Venice Marina. It's for certain my favorite offshore species and early one spring I had the chance to fish with my favorite offshore Captain, Brandon Ballay aboard the Aw Heck.

Man-sized Yellowfin tuna are regular springtime visitors the Gulf of Mexico "lumps."

It was one of those rare late winter-early spring days when the wind gods were asleep and myself, Otis Favre of Slidell, Larry Hill of somewhere in the back woods just north of the Mississippi Gulf Coast sneaked out.  We joined Ballay, Captain Bobby Warren (we had a licensed Captain for a deckhand) and fresh out of Wildlife Enforcement Agent Academy Ronnie Granier in hopes of fish fights, fish for food and in my case, photos. By day's end we'd be guilty on all three counts.

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 when they get "hooked-up" usually announced with a lot screaming and hollering during a brief period of organized chaos. That's 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 fish 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.

What I like about fishing with Brandon Ballay is his persistence. He doesn't look for fish, he pursues them. When other fishermen get frustrated and give up, Ballay gets fired up. He does what no one else has the energy or the will to do to make things happen.

Oh sure he starts off like any normal fisherman does. Rigging up Penn 50s with 70-pound test pulling the plastics and hoping for the textbook strikes that every angler dreams about. Some fishermen even go through the trouble and expense of using downriggers to put the bait where the fish are feeding, particularly when water temperatures are still low. Ballay knows downriggers can sometimes save the day. And very often these basic methods work, hey, they worked for us.

As we entered the midnight lump "arena" we scored quickly. A 30-pound wahoo fell victim to a pink deep diver mirrolure. Even though I told everyone I was there for photos they "forced" me to reel the sucker in. Next it was king mackerel time, three nice ones and two too small to keep, again on the bright pink mirrolure. Ballay smiled and mumbled something about these would come in handy later. Things slowed down and as usual just when somebody popped open a drink or had just unwrapped a sandwich, a stout blackfin tuna grabbed the pink one. No doubt the mirrolure was top gun that day.

Then things really got slow. Boats started to leave around noon and after the crowd had dwindled considerably, Ballay seemed to get a second wind. Like a guy getting ready to shoplift, he cut the engine and whispered even though the closest boat was a quarter-mile away, "Now it's time to fish!"

Like a surgeon heading for the operating table, he broke out the tools he'd need for one of fishing's dirtiest jobs, chumming. First was an anchor with a rope, a lot of rope. Remember there's 200 feet of water at the lumps. Next he pulled out an apron, put it on, took out 3 boxes of frozen bait, pulled in all the trolling lines and while we cast sardine pieces on hooks he was chunking them to the bonito like a farmer feeding his chickens. In no time we had enough bonito to become a mini-longliner.

For nearly two hours we chummed behind the transom. Brandon, the apron and the back of the cockpit looked like a hog had been butchered there. But it paid off. We picked up 7 more blackfins all in the 20-pound and bigger class on cut mackerel and bonito. Bobby Warren got his workout for the day when a 100-pound yellowfin took him up on a piece of bonito.

One of the problems with chum fishing is getting the bait down past the cannibals. Using big chunks with heavy sinkers, too big for the bonito will allow the bait to drift down to where the tuna feed below. Ballay believes in using circle hooks. Having used them for tarpon, one of the hardest species to keep hooked, he carried them over for chum fishing. They also worked well on the red snapper and grouper we picked up as lagniappe that day.

Ballay says 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 with its location.