King Mackerel Frenzy - Carabelle

[castnetaholic]

I had the 4th off and finally got a break from work to do a little fishing, man am I glad I went! We left Crawfordville at 5am and by the time we got to Crums they were already nearly out of ice. Got to the water about daylight and went out of the pass between Dog Island and St. George. We fished one public reef all day about 6 miles out. When we reached the reef there were massive schools of bait fish everywhere (I think their called Greenbacks, anyone know?). We tried squid on the bottom, but had no luck. An older gentleman anchored next to us and instantly began hooking up on huge fish, meanwhile we didn't have a bite. After his second giant Cobia and King I began to watch his technique and had to ask him what we were doing wrong. He was very friendly and shared a bit of fishing advice with me. From what I saw it looked like he was free lining the greenbacks, he confirmed this and I took his advice and cut off my bottom rig. We used a sabiki and caught some green backs and I hooked one to my new simple rig (swivel, 4 ft piece of 100lb flouro, #7 red circle hook). Before I could get the rod onto the holder line began to scream off of the reel, I knew we were on to a good thing. From this point on we caught King after King, the only time we took a break was to catch more bait. We even hooked a nice #20 gag which was VERY hard to throw back. Around noon the winds died down and the water was flat calm, at this point the bait became increasingly more difficult to catch (looking back I think it was because the water was too calm and they could see the line on the SabiKi, can anyone confirm?)
During the later afternoon the seas picked up slightly and we decided to troll a bit. A silver 3 1/2 oz silver spoon trolled at 4.5-5.0 out produced the Stretch 15's and colored spoons. In all once the day was over we ended up two monster Spanish, 8 huge Kings, 3 bonita and were cut off countless times. Fishing is a continuing learning process so lessons learned this trip:

Simple rigs are highly effective
Always fish with natural the bait in the area
Always have more that one pack of Sabiki's (more like 3 or 4)
Never be afraid to ask for advice, most other fisherman are friendly and will be happy to share knowledge (If your reading this thank you to the guy in the green boat)
Don't be afraid to try new things

Hope this helps anyone who is new to fishing for Kings.

[jcflats]

Great report!

Thanks!

[Nambleman]

Wow! Awesome report! I just recently caught my first king trolling a silver spoon. Good tips, ill have to get out there and try for them at a different angle. Thanks!

[castnetaholic]

We had the best luck on a 3 1/2 oz silver spoon, the bites weren't near as good as on a live greenback though. Good luck if you go out!

[zload]

Probably scaled sardines aka whitebait, greenies etc. we saw a lot of them during the week and cast netted a few... we didn't use wire leaders so most of them got cut off pretty quick between the Spanish macs and the sharks...

Pretty good source for baitfish ID http://www.flfish.com/baitfish/scaled_sardine.htm

[castnetaholic]

I was thinking sardines, they were great bait and stayed alive for a long time. They were strong swimmers and swam away from the boat which was good and prevented a lot of tangles. We tried cast netting them with no luck they were really fast. Thanks for the weblink.