Doughtie: The fishing for mackerel and tarpon is as hot as the weather

Hot enough out there for you?

A few years back when it was this hot, an old fellow commented, "it's so hot the trees is chasing the dogs."

I expect this kind of heat in August but June?

One thing I do know is if you are going to be outside in this kind of heat, the water is where you need to be.

Every week I get quite a few calls from folks asking me questions about fishing techniques, places to fish and almost always they tell me that all they have been able to catch were sharks.

With the water temperature in the 80s, sharks are just part the gig. I'll bet that from the first of June until the end of October, I handle hundreds of sharks.

They range from small bonnet head sharks to black tips and on up the ladder to huge tiger sharks, bull sharks and scary big great hammerheads. To people like myself, they are somewhat of an inconvenience but at the same time, they show that we have healthy waters with tons of baitfish or they wouldn't be here at all.

The upside to these higher than normal temperatures is certain species of fish love it. A "for instance" is Spanish and king mackerel. Already, I have seen more kings and Spanish this year than I have seen in the past five years.

It used to be that cobia played second fiddle to king mackerel and everybody but everybody targeted kings. Pound for pound, catching a big king is as close to fishing in the Gulf Stream as you'll get and even better, you don't have to go far at all to catch them.

Whether you are fishing in the Port Royal ship channel, the Savannah ship channel or the Middle Grounds near Gaskin Banks, you won't find another type of fishing more exciting (except maybe tarpon) than a hot king bite.

With rows of razor sharp teeth and a long streamlined body, they hit with such fury and such speed it almost always has you wondering what to do. A big "smoker" king can dump the line off a reel so fast you'll swear the reel is going to start smoking.

King fishing can be very visual too especially when they take a surface bait. Either the water literally explodes where the bait was once swimming or better yet, when they sky rocket a bait. In that scenario, they blast straight up under the bait and can reach 10 feet in the air. It's spectacular!

Their smaller cousins, the Spanish mackerel, are an absolute hoot on light tackle. Last Friday, I went out with a friend and his son, and we smoked the Spanish, and I mean big Spanish around 10 pounds.

Anchored up, I chummed like a mad man and using small, live menhaden, free-lined right behind the boat on ultra light spinning rods, they showed up and I mean that in a big way. Clipping the tails off live menhaden so they spiraled down through our chum, it started a feeding frenzy.

Hooking a menhaden through the tail so it swam just under the surface, it didn't take more than a couple of seconds before a Spanish would crash the bait. On light tackle, it just doesn't get any better. Having never done this type of fishing, the two of them had an absolute ball.

They kept enough for a family meal, released the rest, and it wasn't until the heat got the best of us all that we headed in. I'll guarantee this though and that is they will never forget watching the fish blasting a struggling menhaden. It's the stuff of dreams.

Now for the piece de rèsistance, thanks primarily to this earlier than usual hot weather. The tarpon have arrived. If you are a "bucket list" fisherman and don't have a tarpon on that list than something is definitely wrong.

Most people don't put South Carolina and tarpon in the same sentence but depending on the year, we can have some spectacular tarpon fishing. With tarpon being caught on both the south and north ends of Hilton Head, this might be our year.

For the last two tears it seems the majority stayed a bit south of here but just to illustrate just how good it can be, in my best year here I landed 48 in one month and hooked twice that many with around two dozen passing the 150-pound mark.

Strictly a game fish, each tarpon has its own personality.

Some stay deep never revealing themselves while others go absolutely ballistic doing cartwheels, somersaults or skittering 100 yards with only their tail touching the water.

So take along plenty of PowerAde for the heat and get out there because I guarantee the fishing is just as hot.

This story was originally published June 27, 2015 at 11:07 PM with the headline "Doughtie: The fishing for mackerel and tarpon is as hot as the weather."