Captain’s Corner for July 29 Dave Zalewski 460-9893

In over 30 years of charter fishing in the John’s pass area I have never been able to specifically target kingfish in July. Normally we put aside the kingfish gear around Memorial Day and do not bring it out again until mid October. In past years summer trolling targets have been Spanish mackerel, bonita and barracuda. Spanish mackerel fishing has been good for those seeking them in Tampa Bay and poor for those of us who fish offshore in the gulf. Bonita, not considered to be good table fare because of their dark bloody meat, are available in good numbers where quantities of bait can be found. Barracuda have finally shown up at the markers along the shipping channel and on most of the mid water artificial reefs.
We have been catching most of our kingfish by slow trolling live sardines and hardtails caught on site where we are fishing. “Matching the hatch” has been critical, on many days bait caught inshore and brought with us has failed to produce and we find it necessary to sabiki bait from around whatever structure we are near.
A good game plan if targeting the shipping channel is to start at markers 7 and 8 and work westward until a set of markers is found that is holding bait by either seeing it on your depth finder or using a sabiki to see what is there. Once bait is found, kingfish should be there also.
We deploy 2 stinger rigged flatlines when bottom fishing. One is baited with a frozen sardine and allowed to sink in the current. The other is baited with a bait that is caught on a sabiki no matter what depth we are fishing. In the deeper water we have found using a 4 ounce sinker helps to keep the sabikis stretched out and free of tangels