King Mackerel Dead Bait Option

Another hot Saturday in July and the Constant Threat was anchored near the wreck of a shrimp boat just a few miles east of the Fernandina Jetties at the Georgia-Florida border. Onboard with Gordon Rogers and I was Shelby Childers of St. Simons Island. We had departed from our normal slow-trolling strategy in favor of the more stealthy approach to king mackerel fishing. Shelby’s faith in this style of presentation had us quietly waiting for the appearance of a smoker.

The stifling heat was beginning to wear on my patience as the clock crept towards noon. Except for the occasional shark or curious seagull, nothing had shown an interest in our bait spread. We had two fresh, dead menhaden rigged with treble hooks floating just behind the boat, and a live menhaden suspended under a float was swimming about 100 feet off the stern.

Shelby approached the thankless task of chumming with the patience of a monk. He would scoop up a menhaden and cut it into several small pieces which he then pitched over the side to be carried away in the tidal currents. Occasionally, he would take a whole fish, inflate it with a hypodermic needle and syringe, and toss it over the gunwale to drift back on the surface. Dangling from the stern was a mesh bag filled with a dog food and menhaden oil mixture. The chum slick trailing off behind the boat looked thick enough to walk on.

As I moved forward to check something at the bow, Gordon inquired, “What happened to all the floating chum?”

I glanced back behind the stern, and all I could see was several ripples in the water where only moments before there had been floating menhaden. My eyes were drawn to the two baits floating just a few feet behind the engines.

Suddenly, the pointed snout of a really large kingfish emerged from the water beneath the closer of the floating menhaden. The toothy jaws opened and simply engulfed the whole bait. No attack with slashing and ripping. No skyrocketing jump or acrobatics. The fish then slid back beneath the water with a gracefulness much in contrast to its image as a vicious predator. All that was left was a dimple in the water as if a rainbow trout had risen to the surface to take a mayfly.

The peace and tranquility of the moment ended abruptly as the king felt the sting of the hooks. The rod in the starboard stern holder bent over so severely the tip was almost touching the water, and line began to disappear at an alarming rate. Shelby sprang from his perch near the chum bucket and seized the rod.

I ran to the bow and pitched out the anchor-line float as Gordon fired up the engines. After a 30-minute battle, which carried us several hundred yards from our original position, the fish finally tired enough for me to reach it with the gaff. The 43-lb. king that slid over the bow rail convinced me that live bait is not always best. Shelby had a big I-told-you-so grin as he admired his trophy.

Big baits take big fish. The author (left) and Capt. Dominic Guadagnoli, of Brunswick, show off a 54 1/2-lb. smoker king mackerel that hit a downrigged ribbonfish. Both fishermen are marine fisheries biologists with DNRʼs Coastal Resources Division.

When I started my pursuit of king mackerel back in the mid-80s, live-bait fishing had just taken hold in coastal Georgia. Capt. Terry Lacoss of Amelia Island was consistently catching 30-lb. kings at the Fernandina Jetties and winning much of the local tournament booty. His success was largely attributed to live bait, causing much misery among the traditional anglers who favored spoons, feathers, and rigged ballyhoo trolled at fast speeds. As they say, lessons learned hard are lessons learned well. Before long, homemade live wells began to appear on the decks of offshore boats, and the rest is history.

King mackerel anglers, particularly the ones who fish tournaments, are fanatical about live bait. There have been times when we have taken the Constant Threat on a 40-mile run just to catch menhaden! This apparent insanity is well justified since a livewell full of frisky baits such as menhaden, cigar minnows, or blue runners (hardtails) often means the difference between success and failure. However, there are few things that max out my anxiety meter like the uncertainty of catching bait on tournament day.

This anxiety is borne of experience, since there are times when live bait is just impossible to find, much less catch. The larger menhaden can scatter during heavy weather or refuse to come to the surface where they can be caught with a cast net. Offshore, the cigar minnows get spooked by all the boats circling around the buoy and just won’t hit your gold hook rig. Then don’t forget about the ultimate nightmare. The livewell pump fails and you don’t have a spare.

If you’re a prepared angler, all of these complications can become just a minor inconvenience. While other frustrated anglers are wringing their hands in desperation, you reach in the cooler and pull out the dead baits you’ve brought along as insurance.

I know what you’re thinking. How can a limp, lifeless carcass draw strikes like a lively fish that sends out all sorts of vibrations and flashes? The larger kings prefer to feed on the kinds of prey that give them the most nutritional return for the energy they expend during the chase. Menhaden, bluefish, and Spanish mackerel are rich in fats providing a good source of energy to the larger kingfish, many of which are gravid females.

In the southeast United States, the discarded catch of finfish from shrimp trawls provides a ready source of food for the larger mackerels. The strategy of anchoring and chumming takes advantage of the fact that many of these bigger fish have become accustomed to these easy meals. Shelby Childers refers to these big females as “Garbage Gerties,” given their appetite for dead fish.

This presentation style works particularly well near shipping channels, jetties, offshore sloughs, natural live bottom, and just about any place that concentrates bait and predators. Once you have located an area you know to be holding kings try to find a tidal current rip or break in the bottom contour. These spots are even better if there are bait schools showing on your bottom machine or shrimp boats working in the vicinity. Drop anchor and let the boat settle into the current. Remember to have a float attached to the bitter end of the anchor line just in case you have to chase down a large fish.

The next task is to set up a chum line by either cutting or grinding fresh-caught menhaden or using frozen chum prepared for such an occasion. Remember, for chum, the smaller menhaden readily caught in the rivers and sounds will work just as well as the hand-size ones used as live baits. A mesh bag of dog food soaked in menhaden oil helps enhance the chum slick and attracts small fish to your area.

Add floating chum to the slick by injecting air into the gut cavity of whole fish with a hypodermic needle and syringe. These can be whole menhaden, weakfish, spot, croaker, or just about any groundfish found in the area. Drop a whole fish in the slick every five minutes or so.

If you have live baits, these should be fished beneath floats or balloons. The float serves two purposes. It keeps the bait up in the water column where they are more conspicuous to predators while providing a visual reference for the angler. Egg-shaped floats or trout corks can be used with a stop knot to control the depth of the bait. Balloons should be inflated to a 4-6 inch diameter and attached about five feet above the bait.

Live baits should be fished on the same terminal tackle you would choose for trolling. A basic rig consists of two Eagle Claw L774 trebles joined with 40-lb. Sevenstrand braided wire or No. 4 Magnum single wire. Leaders should be made from two feet of the same wire used to join the trebles and finished up with a No. 10 black barrel swivel. The dead baits can be rigged with either a pair of No. 6 L774 trebles or a single L118 hook. I shorten the leader down to about eight inches of wire on the dead baits.

You want the dead baits to appear just like the floating chum. Therefore, you must inflate the rigged baitfish using the needle and syringe to get the right buoyancy. If you have trouble getting the bait to stay on top, slide a green or brown bream cork down the leader to the nose hook. This small float helps keep the bait at the surface. I use 12- to 15-lb. test low-visibility monofilament like Berkeley Inshore Big Game. This smaller diameter line reduces the drag on the floating bait and helps them to appear like the free-floating chum.

If all goes according to plan, the kings will work their way up your chum slick, eventually reaching your prepared baits. Some days you will see the fish taking the floating chum while at other times they just seem to appear near the stern of the boat. Be warned. This style of fishing can stimulate quite a bit of interest from a variety of finny creatures. Don’t be surprised if cobia, sailfish, and tarpon crash your party!

If you’re fishing a spot where the kings may be scattered or you feel a little uneasy about dropping the anchor, then trolling or drifting may be your best approach. Again, dead baits can be used to enhance a live-bait spread or work well alone. Local fishing lore is filled with tales of big fish falling to dead baits. Just recently, a St. Simons boat, Kabooka, won top honors at the Kingbuster 400 in St. Augustine after they boated a 38-pounder. They claimed the top prize by snatching the smoker from beneath a school of Spanish mackerel using the only bait they had, a dead ribbonfish.

Kingfish Candy: The Ribbonfish

The cutlassfish, or ribbonfish as we call them, has become one the trademarks of serious king mackerel anglers. Throughout the southeast United States, a thriving cottage industry has developed around the catching, preserving, and selling of ribbonfish. Hardcore anglers will drive long hours and spend sleepless nights in order to put up a stock of these silver baits for the season.

Why is everyone so crazy about the ribbonfish? The answer is simple. They work! Anglers have found that just about any gamefish worth chasing will eat a ribbonfish. Everything from barracuda to wahoo will gobble up one of these shiny critters. Tournament anglers like ribbons because there are times when big smoker kings just won’t eat anything else.

The author, Capt. Spud Woodward, with a rigged ribbonfish. Note the live-bait hook in the nose and the trebles embedded in the sides.

Shrimpers working the nearshore waters will pick up ribbonfish in their trawls. These are normally discarded from the catch. However, some enterprising captains have learned to cull out the least-damaged ribbons and bring them back to the dock where they turn them into greenbacks. Although trawl-caught ribbons are less aesthetically pleasing to the human eye, they will often work well, particularly in dingy water.

The best quality ribbons are caught on hook-and-line by anglers who have refined their methods to an art form. Needless to say, the hook-caught ribbons shine like newly-minted dimes and command the top price of $3 to $5 each. Like most things in America, the more you need something the more it costs. So expect to pay premium prices the evening before a tournament.

Ribbonfish can reach a whopping 4-feet in length. However, those in the 28- to 36-inch range are best for king mackerel, wahoo, and other pelagic gamefish. This may sound like an awfully big bait to most anglers. But believe me, I’ve seen ribbons attacked by kings and Spanish which were no longer than the bait!

The basic ribbonfish rig is built by connecting a nickel 4/0 Eagle Claw L254 live-bait hook to three No. 4 L775 nickel trebles with 60-lb. Sevenstrand wire. The first treble should be about six inches behind the live bait hook. The other two trebles should be spaced about eight inches apart. These nickel hooks blend well with the silver color of the ribbonfish.

These rigs can be dressed with skirts to add a little more flash. A variety of jig heads can be used in lieu of the live-bait hook adding both color and stability to the bait. Before hooking up a ribbon to an unweighted rig, I will push a 1/2-oz. trout sinker or worm weight down the throat. A properly rigged ribbonfish will travel through the water without spinning or twisting.

In my travels throughout the southeast United States, I’ve seen many ways of fishing with ribbonfish. In northeast Florida and Georgia, ribbonfish are fished just off the bottom using downriggers or trolled on flat lines. Some anglers even build a combo rig by attaching a small ribbonfish behind a live menhaden. All of these methods work and there are many opportunities to experiment with this highly productive bait.

Traditionally, blue-water anglers have used a variety of dead baits to draw the attention of blue marlin, tuna, and the like. Although you won’t be dragging your baits at seven knots behind a big offshore battle wagon, it’s still important that they be preserved properly and rigged to swim as naturally as possible at slow-trolling speeds.

The Spanish mackerel is an important food of big kings during the summer. It is not uncommon to see packs of kings ravaging schools of Spanish during a major feed. However, these Spanish are difficult to keep alive in conventional baitwells and usually have to be caught at your fishing spot. If you catch one, it must be immediately rigged and put back into the water to ensure survival.

Savvy anglers have learned that a dead Spanish mackerel can fool even the wariest of kings. A big Spanish in the prop wash can bring the action right to the stern of the boat while the same bait deployed on a downrigger can produce fish when the surface action has slowed. Frozen Spanish mackerel can be purchased from most major tackle shops that cater to blue-water anglers.

However, if you’re an energetic type, a quick dash off the beach with some light-action tackle and Clark spoons should produce enough of a supply of bait for a few trips. A 12- to 15-inch Spanish is the perfect size for kingfish bait. As soon as the Spanish is landed, it should be gutted and dropped in a cooler filled with a slushy mixture of seawater, rock salt, and crushed ice. This brine solution will help toughen the skin of the Spanish and immediately freeze the softer tissues.

The best way to prepare a Spanish mackerel for trolling is to thaw it thoroughly and scrape the teeth to eliminate the chance of cutting yourself during the rigging process. Then limber the bait by working it back and forth. Sew the gut cavity, gills, and mouth shut with a rigging needle and thread. A chin weight, such as a 1/2-oz. egg sinker should be attached, again using the rigging needle. This weight will serve as a keel and help the bait track straight and swim in an upright position.

I use a modified live-bait rig consisting of a 4/0 bronze L246 live-bait hook connected to a No. 2 L774 treble hook with an 8-inch section of No. 5 Magnum wire or 60-lb. Sevenstrand. A 2-foot section of No. 4 wire is attached to the live-bait hook and finished off with a No. 10 black barrel swivel. The Spanish is attached to this rig by bringing the point of the live-bait hook up through the bottom jaw and out the top of the nose. The trailing treble hook is pinned through the skin just behind the dorsal fin. This type of rig serves a dual purpose as it can be used for live Spanish mackerel, blue runners, or other larger-than-average baits you might encounter during a trip.

Cigar minnows, split-tail mullet, and ribbonfish are available at most marinas and tackle shops. All of these can be used to create an effective dead-bait spread or supplement a live-bait presentation. During the peak of the run in the summer, the bigger kings can get boat shy or just don’t feel like chasing frisky bait. This is when a dead bait drifted or trolled on a long, flat line can be productive. A standard live-bait rig can be used for minnows, while the same rig described for the Spanish mackerel will work for the mullet.

“Be prepared” is a great motto for anglers as well as Boy Scouts. Add a few dead bait presentations to your repertoire and turn around those frustrating days when live baits are as rare as honest politicians. If you’re a tournament angler, having a few dead baits can make the difference between being a hero at the homestead and licking your wounded ego.

King mackerel are just the beginning of the list of species that will hit dead baits. These monster red snappers were caught on downrigged baits.