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Big Bite at Kingfish Heaven
Terry Lacoss
King mackerel fishermen dressed in foul weather gear, more resembling an ice-fishing tournament than the 2009 SKA National Championship, hurriedly prepared their kingfish boats for what was predicted to by a long, cold and bumpy ride. I was invited to go as a writer and quite frankly was not prepared for both the cold and bumpy ride that laid ahead.
“Jeff said he won’t be using his rain pants and I have a rain jacket for you as well,” Nancy Dunbar said as I came aboard their kingfish boat, Fish dancer. “You look cold, Terry!”
Cold may not have been the best word that described the two and a half-hour boat ride in two- to four-foot seas that took place after Nancy Dunbar and the rest of the 210 SKA teams experienced after showing Jack Holmes their boat number.
Jeff Dunbar aimed his Mercury powered, 33-foot Contender kingfish boat directly at the east pass, while other boats ran towards the west pass from Biloxi’s Point Cadet Marina located at the Isle Casino Hotel.
After clearing the pass and several sandbars along the way, Jeff programmed his Raymarine GPS/Fish Finder for an area called the Horseshoe which soon locked in the GPS and showed both a course to navigate and a distance of 72 miles.
“I believe half of the kingfish fleet are heading towards the same spot,” Jeff Dunbar said. “I know we will catch kings at the Horseshoe, my other spot was holding larger kings during practice, but there wasn’t that many. I’m afraid that we might make a long run and come up empty handed. We are gong to fish the guaranteed kingfish spot!”
Kingfish boats from 23 to almost 40 feet were spraying sheets of saltwater from their bows while indicating their headway. Amazingly, I saw several 23-foot boats keeping up with the open class kingfish boats! However I was glad to be on Jeff and Nancy’s 33-foot kingfish boat!
At one point Jeff throttled back the starboard 300hp Mercury Verado outboard and used the port Mercury to increase boat speed over a steep wave, or throttle down as well.
“Its amazing the torque these new Mercury Verado 4-stroke outboards have,” Jeff Dunbar said. “In rough seas, like the seas we have today, it’s easier for me to throttle up or down with one Mercury, than to keep adjusting two throttles.
Some 20 miles offshore, a pair of oilrigs soon came into view.
“Don’t get any ideas Nancy and Terry, we are not king fishing at those oilrigs, we have 50 miles left to run,” Jeff said. “The water is too cold and dirty here, we need to find clean water and 74-degree water temperature.”
A few weeks earlier, Hurricane Ida had made landfall at both the Mississippi and Louisiana coastlines, followed by a cold front that dropped water temperatures into the mid 60s. Dirty, cold water wasn’t the place to kingfish within 60 miles of the Biloxi Mississippi SKA Kingfish Headquarters.
After a two and a half-hour boat ride, we finally arrived at the popular Mississippi Delta kingfish waters called the Horseshoe.
“As you can see, there are several oil-rigs here that are constructed in a horseshoe shape,” Jeff explained. “Right in the middle of these oilrigs, there is a live bottom that rises from 250 feet of water to just over 200 feet of water. This is called the Salt Humps.”
“You mean we are not going to kingfish close to the oilrigs,” I asked Jeff.
“No, Terry. Nancy steer the boat towards that group of kingfish boats with mackerel fishermen on the bow fighting kings, while I rig blue runners to kingfish leaders,” Jeff replied.
At this point I began to wonder why the “Amazing Race” camera crew wasn’t here to film what I thought to be a perfect adventure!
Jeff was now free lining the first flat-line kingfish bait some 30-feet behind the boat when a speedy kingfish attacked the livie and took off on a typical kingfish run. Nancy took the deeply bent kingfish rod while Jeff rigged a second kingfish bait and began free-lining the bait behind the boat. Seconds later, a second king struck Jeff’s live bait, now the Dunbar’s were playing a double header of kings smack in the middle of an amazing kingfish bite.
The rough ocean had turned into what many seasoned king mackerel fishermen remember as the “Kingfish Bite of the Century.” Almost every kingfish boat was hooked up to a massive school of kingfish while my Nikon D-700 digital camera recorded the scene as fast it could focus.
At one point a school of kingfish began skyrocketing some 50 feet away while I simply aimed my camera, using the rapid-fire camera setting. The only problem was that kingfish were sky rocketing at various distances away from my camera lens. With the automatic focus feature, my Nikon often picked a kingfish boat or oilrig to focus on and not the kingfish. It was also very difficult to center the high leaping kingfish in my viewfinder, because the kings were skyrocketing so fast from the water.
After looking at the photos, I now have actual proof that kingfish can leap some 5 or 10 feet from the water and even higher!
Between 9:30 AM and 1:00PM the VHF marine radio was dead quiet. However I am sure that many of the SKA teams were talking on their satellite phones. Finally, a few kingfish teams just could not wait to tell fellow teams of their once-in-a-lifetime kingfish experience.
“It's been crazy, we simply cannot get a bait down on a downrigger,” one of the teams explained. “No matter how fast we lower the downrigger weight, a kingfish eats the live bait on the way down!”
“We are having the same good luck,” a second kingfish team replied. “We have been fishing all flat lines and it has been a challenge to get the live bait 30 feet behind the boat without a kingfish eating the live bait. Now we are casting our live baits as far as we can to get them away from the boat!
However, the Dunbars and myself were quick to notice that none of the boats that had caught any of the giant kingfish that were later weighed in, were announcing their success and location. While most of the VHF radio chatter included lots of king mackerel that weighed in the 30-pound class.
“We found a big ledge some 200 yards west of that big pack of kingfish boats,” Captain Rick Croson, Jr. said. “My first preference is to stay away from a large group of kingfish boats. So this ledge was perfect and we were marking a beautiful school of baitfish and kingfish too. We simply positioned our 23-foot Onslow Bay kingfish boat upwind of the ledge and began flat lining live blue runners as we drifted over the fish haven. Our first two kings weighed 35 pounds each and our third king weighed 44 pounds!”
Team Blue Water Candy, hailing from Wilmington, N.C., went on to win the Class of 23 National Championship with an aggregate weight of 91.29 lbs. Included were kingfish weighing 46.75 lbs and 44.54 lbs.
“It was kingfish bite of a lifetime,” Captain Rick Croson said.
Also fishing with aboard the Evinrude powered Onslow Bay-23 were teammates Jodie Gay and Russell Weaver.
“We came close to winning the SKA 2007 Nationals” by placing second,” Croson said. “Conditions were totally different where we fished some 35 miles offshore at the Guss Oilrigs. Here we used our Penn model 625 manual downriggers outfitted with Elec-Tra-Mate, electric motors. We also beefed up our kingfish tackle using 30-lb mono, Star Rods and Accurate reels and sent large blue runners and bluefish down deep. Our largest king weighed 52 lbs. We just needed to up grade a 22 lb king and we would have taken first place!”
Rube McMullan and sons, Brant and Barrett fished aboard the Ocean Isle Fishing Center, ran plumb out of kingfish baits at 1:30 PM. During their search for livies, a tightly balled school of menhaden showed up on the surface in 200 feet of water, walking the popular kingfish team to first place honors and a kingfish catch of a lifetime.
“Just before we cast netted enough menhaden to kingfish with, a fairly large bull shark had sky rocketed right through the baitfish school,” Rube McMullen said. “Knowing that our kingfish had a good chance of being eaten by nearby sharks, we continued to fish close to that school of tightly balled menhaden and hoped that the hammerhead shark had satisfied his appetite.”
After lowering a double pogy kingfish leader to a water depth of 40 feet with our Cannon manual downrigger, a record-breaking kingfish ate the double pogy setup and sped off on a deep run. Barrett took the deeply bent kingfish rod and played the kingfish while Rube and Brant rigged kingfish leaders to live pogies and set them off the transom of their kingfish boat.
“All of a sudden Barrett’s king came to the end of its smoker run and rose up to the bow of our 32-foot Yellowfin kingfish boat powered by Yamaha outboards, like a Popsicle,” Rube McMullan said. “Barrett shouted for help as his kingfish was huge. After gaffing a 74.10 record breaking king mackerel, we were all very thankful that those nearby sharks had left our kingfish alone. I believe if we would have seen the size of Barrett’s kingfish early on during the fight, we might have become too excited and panicked with the thoughts of nearby sharks eating our kingfish and lost our kingfish catch of a lifetime,”
Other boats during the kingfish tournament also experienced shark encounters as well.
“We had a 50-pound kingfish all tired out and floating on the surface like a bobber when a huge hammerhead shark swam up and swallowed that big kingfish whole,” Team Crikey’s Andre Moore said. “That shark didn’t even bother to take small bites out of our kingfish, it just opened up its huge jaws and sucked that 50-pound kingfish into its stomach.”
The McMullans have their kingfish displayed in a large ice box at their Ocean Isle Fishing Center where hundreds of visitors have come by to take a look at their new SKA record breaking kingfish and pending new Mississippi State record king mackerel.
“We have plans on cremating our kingfish and taking it off shore to one of our favorite kingfish ledges and spreading the ashes,” Rube McMullen said. “This is our way of paying tribute to a super, super king mackerel. We plan on calling the new reef, King Zilla Reef. We also hope that the ashes of our king mackerel will spawn a new generation of super kings as well!”
News has spread fast in major saltwater fishing publications about the McMullans' record breaking king mackerel, generating new interests in king mackerel fishing, both competitive and recreational. The McMullans' kingfish catch could not have happened at a better time when the fishing industry has been struggling due to a slow economy.
