Cobia season’s over; time to go after king mackerel

Thank goodness cobia season is over until 2017. Now with that said, what are you going to do?

Personally, I am ecstatic that the cobia will have a break from the pressure that has been put on them. Believe it or not, there are other fish in the sea that are much more fun to catch than any cobia I have ever caught.

I am talking about king mackerel.

When you hook into a king, the fight is as close as you’ll come to catching a pelagic species like a wahoo, and the best part is you can catch them within sight of land.

In my 57 years living here and hundreds upon hundreds of hours of king mackerel fishing, the largest king I ever managed to boat was a 49-pounder that ate a Spanish mackerel I was reeling in, and only by the grace of God did it get hooked. I have caught a bunch of kings in the 36- to 46-pound range, and other than a 54-pound king caught by Frank Gaston from Hilton Head Island a couple of years back, they simply don’t get much bigger around these parts.

Or if they do, I haven’t run into them.

King mackerel that size and bigger are common in the Gulf of Mexico, but for some reason, they don’t get that big along the Southeast coast. It might be the abundance of food that lets them grow so big in the Gulf, but whatever the reason, Frank’s fish is an oddity around here.

I will say this: Whenever I pull up the photo of Frank’s 54-pound king, that picture has an effect on me like Pavlov’s experiment had on dogs.

First of all, this type of fishing is inexpensive compared to other species, because you don’t have to go far. Secondly, anybody can do it. And best of all, king mackerel are pound-for-pound the meanest, fastest and most exciting fish to catch.

King fishing used to be the only game in town. For years and years nobody ever fished for cobia or tarpon because kings were, uh, king. How did we catch them? We trolled ballyhoo on the surface and drone spoons down deep using No. 3 planers. Then in the mid-1980s, someone figured out that live mullet trolled very slowly was the way to catch “smoker” kings (large kings), and the popularity of king mackerel fishing skyrocketed.

I remember going to king tournaments where more than 600 boats entered the fray. As techniques continued to improve, live menhaden became the bait of choice and with it, the rigs used to catch them got lighter and lighter. The only constant with these light rods and reels was the need to have a reel that would hold plenty of line, because even a 35-pound king can dump line off the reel so fast it will make your head spin.

Nowadays, king fishing has taken a back seat to cobia, and though the Southern Kingfish Association still holds tournaments, not many folks around here pursue these fantastic game fish.

The Savannah Ship Channel used to be the place to go. On any given day, every charter boat on Hilton Head headed to the ship channel for kings. It was a lot of fun as there was always tons of bantering going on over the radio as we “bump trolled” up and down the ship channel.

Bump trolling is pretty much like it sounds. Fishing four or six lines with live menhaden as bait, you fish two down deep and stagger the rest to cover the water column. Bumping the boat in and out of gear, the object is to keep the baits straight behind the boat but not go so fast that the baits drown. When a king hits one of the baits, it’s as close to Gulf Stream fishing as you can get. Talk about hauling boogie; big kings can strip 300 yards of line off a reel in seconds flat.

Then as the weather cools, they tend to skyrocket baits. Like a missile, they come straight up under a bait, and I have seen them 10 feet in the air with their razor-sharp teeth snapping away.

Just writing about king fishing has me all fired up to get out there and give it a go. I know a lot of you are new to this area and all you hear is cobia, cobia and more cobia, but if you really want to have fun, king mackerel are the ticket.

This story was originally published June 25, 2016 at 2:58 PM with the headline "Cobia season’s over; time to go after king mackerel."