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Sargeant column: A Fling With The Kings

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By FRANK SARGEANT | The Tampa Tribune

Published: October 19, 2007

For anglers who have never experienced the speed and power of offshore gamefish, there's no better time than now to head for the coast. King mackerel are being caught from Cedar Key to Sarasota, and fishing will only get better from now to the end of November.

Large kings are also known as 'smokers,' not because they taste good when smoked (though they do) but because they can take line from a reel so fast it literally smokes as water vaporizes from the screaming spool. Kings are thought to swim at speeds approaching 40 mph, and they excrete a thin slime when frightened that allows them to slide through the water with little friction, according to state biologists.

Average fall fish weigh 7 to 10 pounds, but there are always plenty of mature kings of 20 to 30 pounds in the mix, and occasionally 40- and even 50-pounders are caught.

One of the main attractions of kingfish is that they move in close to shore, allowing them to be caught from boats smaller than those required to travel out of sight of land. Many a king will come over the rail of 17-foot-long center consoles in the next few weeks, and some will even be caught from Gulf piers and from the Sunshine Skyway walkways.

In general, the smaller school kings stay with the main baitfish migrations, which pass one to eight miles from shore. Areas around artificial reefs, wrecks and hard bottom often hold fish even when the bait is not evident. Captain Justin Moore of Holmes Beach has been reaching the limit on kings during the past week from the Manatee County reefs just off the beaches.

Locations, Methods Vary

Larger kings, on the other hand, tend to prowl near the larger passes in search of big prey like mullet, ladyfish, Spanish mackerel and bluefish. It's not uncommon to catch 30-pound fish and larger within 100 yards of the beach.

Areas like Clearwater Pass and the nearby 'hard bottom' are famous for producing tournament-winning kings, and the two main entries into Tampa Bay, Egmont Pass and Southwest Pass, are both top spots for big fish, particularly around the Egmont Hole, where depths plunge to 90 feet, and on the shallower sandy pan just inside Egmont Key, where large schools of bait often hang out.

School kings sometimes show themselves just after dawn as they drive baitfish to the surface, attracting clouds of diving gulls that make the aggregations easy to locate. These fish typically drop to depths of 30 feet and more as soon as the sun gets high, however, and then it's a matter of trolling around baitfish schools to find them.

Trollers typically pull No. 2 planers or use downriggers to put baits down 20 to 30 feet. (Downrigger expert Vance Tice says the bait or lure should be positioned 30 to 50 feet behind the rigger ball, no closer, or the fish may be spooked by the hardware.)

Some anglers also do well by towing large diving plugs like the Mann's 25+, typically on 30- to 50-pound tackle; the big lures require fairly stout gear to handle effectively.

Time To Lure Them In

That's not the case for fishing live baits, however, where tournament-winning anglers sometimes fish live bait on 15-pound-test tackle to fool kings that may exceed 50 pounds. The trick is to get the bite, and sometimes heavier gear seems to put off the older and wiser fish.

Common live baits include large threadfins, menhaden, blue runners, ladyfish and mullet, with lengths of 6 to 8 inches preferred by most anglers. These baits are towed very slowly, at their normal swimming speed, on 'stinger rigs' that include a No. 6 extra-strong treble hook in the nose, and another dangling aft on a length of wire. The idea is that if a king tries to chop off the tail - a common feeding tactic - they get the rear hook.

The wire is a must because of the sharp, shearing teeth of king mackerel. Most anglers use the shortest length possible, however - 6 to 10 inches above the lead hook is typical, and wire strengths are usually No. 4 to No. 6.

Many expert anglers, like Alex Leva of the Hydra-Sports Team headquartered in Tampa, use a menhaden oil drip to set up an alluring wake behind their boat. They then troll long, oval repeat patterns, building up this scent trail, often around the break line where green offshore water meets brackish black water coming out of a pass, or over known hard bottom or reef areas.

Retired kingfish expert Gene Turner of St. Petersburg developed the popular tactic of using poultry shears to snip up threadfins, then dribbling the pieces over the side to lure kings to his anchored boat. When fish are highly pressured, sometimes the silent boat and the chum can be more effective than slow-trolling. Anglers typically fish live threadfins in the slick with this method.

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