Captain’s Corner: Jay Mastry

The Tampa Bay Times

Kingfishing while bottom fishing can at times be most productive and now may be the ideal time to give it a try.  With a new moon in a couple days, some stronger than normal tides will get the bottom dwellers in the mood to chew and the hard moving tidal flow will extend your chum line.  While anchoring up, it’ll help draw fish from farther away and keep fly-lined kingfish baits off the bottom and in your chum slick.  A chum bag off the back of the boat works great.  Enhancing it, with cut slivers of fresh bait works even better.  On our last trip, anchored on a patch of hard bottom in 45 ft. we had the best of both worlds.  While bouncing the bottom we caught 3 dozen mangrove snapper, a cobia, sheepshead, red and gag grouper, a couple of scamp and a couple of triggerfish.  We caught kingfish on our fly-lined baits some we suspended beneath balloons while others swimming freely in our slick.  All our bottom fish ate whitebait, live shrimp or frozen sardines.  The kingfish opted for full grown whitebait.  If you’ve been to the popular kingfish hunting grounds in 20 ft. off St. Pete Beach, Blinds Pass and Sunset Beach and not very productive…. You’re not alone.  The numbers we traditionally see this time of year up til now have been inexplicably absent.  Though the few we’ve caught there have been in the 25-30 lb. range, there’s not been a lot of them.  Better reports lately have come from the ships channel around markers 5 & 6 and 7 & 8.  The “parking lot” in 30 ft. off Blinds Pass may be worth a look too.

Captain Jay Mastry