Offshore fishing report

Several techniques will work during the fall kingfish run

By LARRY A. HOFFMAN
Published October 21, 2005

Dust off your king mackerel gear and get ready for the fall migration. Each spring and fall the west coast of Florida gets a treat of 6 to 8 weeks of hard-hitting, sky-jumping kingfish action.

This past week a few kingfish showed up offshore, signaling the start of the fall migration. The migration can be drawn out like a bell curve: It starts slow in October, builds to a peak in November and slows down in December.

Fortunately, the kingfish run along the beaches. Every year kingfish over 30 pounds are routinely caught at the Redington Long Pier. The "pier rats," as they refer to themselves, use live baits suspended on lines that have been cast 100 yards out into the Gulf. This technique is very effective and has produced tarpon, kingfish, sharks and cobia for years.

We have two groups of kingfishermen on this coast. One group prefers to troll hardware, and the other group is made of live-bait specialists. Both techniques produce kingfish. Hardware draggers use deep-lipped plugs and king spoons. No. 2 and 3 planers are deployed to get the spoons down. It is a proven method for catching kingfish and Spanish mackerel. Trolling speeds vary, but 5 to 6 knots is good when trolling planers.

The fish strike the spoon, thereby releasing the planer. The angler can reel in the fish, although on a charter boat the last 20 feet is often hand-lined by the first mate and the kingfish is thrown right into the fish box. This method is very effective and can produce a lot of kingfish in a short period of time.

One side benefit of trolling hardware for kingfish is lots of time you will snag a nice grouper. Areas that work well for trolling are all the artificial reefs, the Egmont shipping channel and around anchored ships and shipwrecks.

Live-bait specialists use two methods when kingfishing. The first is to anchor with a quick-release anchor system, so that when a big fish is hooked it can be chased. When we use this method we deploy four lines with live baits off the transom of the boat. We use biodegradable balloons to keep our live baits at the depths we want. When the kingfish strikes, the balloon either bursts or comes lose.

You want to put your live baits at different depths to cover a larger portion of the water column. Kites are often deployed with a quick-release system to get baits farther away from the boat. The quick release system allows you to place the bait just below the water surface and is very effective.

We prefer the second method of live-bait kingfishing: slow-trolling, which has been perfected on this coast during the past 13 years of tournament fishing. We deploy two downriggers and four flat lines. The downrigger balls are deployed at different spots depending on the depth you fish. You want to stagger the depth to make sure your lines don't get tangled. We place two rods on outriggers deep in the spread and two short lines on bait right in the prop wash.

Live-bait slow-trolling provides great action. When you get on an aggressive kingfish bite, there is nothing like it. Seeing aggressive kingfish sky-rocketing on your live bait is awesome, and when the kingfish strike they make long runs. It's not unusual to have a big king run off 400 yards of line in less than a minute.

We use 17-pound line and high-speed 6-to-1 ratio reels. Each rod has a small swivel attached to a 30-pound wire leader with a stinger rig that includes a small treble hook on the trailer. We chase the fish and try to control the fight from a vertical position to keep the kingfish from breaking the line.

Kingfish of more than 60 pounds are caught all the time on light tackle. Light drags are key. Slow-trolling speeds need to be as slow as possible, 1 mph or less. The slower you go, the better your presentation.

When fishing for big kings, large blue runners, ladyfish and large threadfins work extremely well. Slow-trolling techniques, along with chumming, have produced most to the winning fish on this coast. If you want a big kingfish, live-bait fishing is the way to go.

Larry "Huffy" Hoffman charters out of John's Pass, Treasure Island. Call 727 709-9396 or e-mail him at huffyl@tampabay.rr.com

[Last modified October 21, 2005, 02:15:38]