6/23 – WHAT A DAY! I keep hearing that the king mackerel bite is slow nearshore – but i’ll tell you what, i sure haven’t had a problem finding big concentrations of these fish. I think most folks are either over-running them or not quite getting there – they’re not on the beach yet, but they will be soon. That doesn’t matter though – with my 23 DV PArker we can get to them with ease.
John and his dad were sure in for a treat this past week! This past Friday the bite was so hot that i didn’t even need live or dead bait – dolphin weenies and yo-zuris was the ticket for most the morning. We were getting double and triple hook-ups using light spinning rods….and it was a blast. The only problem we had was getting them past the cudas = john even had one get bitten off right at the gunnel!
Some boat traffic slowed the bite but we were able to stay on them with no problem – shifting to live-bait mid-morning. But it didn’t matter – we had a boat limit of 9 kings in no time and the bite was so hot at times that we couldnt keep more than one line in the water. As I jigged bait, i found a bunch of good stuff- sardines, big cigars and a few (barely legal) beeliners (in the shallowest water that i’ve ever found them). I would put the beeliners on the downrigger only to have them get inhaled by huge AJs within seconds. These weren’t the 30-40lb fish i found last week – most i feel were 60lb+ and john fought one for what seemed like an hour before he broke it off right under the boat. Others tested our tackle or got the line into the structure – we didnt get one in but at least we knew what they were!
Our bonus fish of the day was a fat 36″ cobia that followed a shark to the boat and ate a live cigar – as i dont target cobia too much in the spring, now is the time when we land them…slow trolling for kings and dolphin.
The mahi made a decent appearence today – and we landed 3 bailers, jumping off a few and we had 1 good bull come crashing into our spread like a bolt of lightening. I think we would have done better with the dolphin had we gone out further – but who leaves a king bite that hot?
Awesome day guys – i have some good dates open, including Thursday the 29th, Saturday the 1rst, July 4rth, 8 and 9 – and more dates later in the month.
NOW IS THE TIME TO CATCH YOUR BIG FISH! Kings, dolphin, AJs and Cobia!
