Trolling for Kings, Leads to Grouper!
3:44 PM
Posted by Unknown
I woke up at 5am, pick up a coffee and doughnut and headed over to my friends house to head out for some kings. We loaded the boat and were off the dock by 6:30. The wind was blowing at about 15knots. The weatherman had forecasted 5 knots but we all know how reliable he is. We headed down the inter coastal waterway to head out of clear water pass. It was a little rough in the gulf so we knew it would be hard to spot bait schools to troll around. We headed to hard bottom by the sand key area and started to blind troll. We had four lines out, two had deep diving plugs rated for 25 feet and two had four inch king fish spoons tipped with strips of whiting. We soon had one fish that tangled all four lines, and spit the hook. So we then had to untangle all the lines, a very tedious task indeed. We continued to troll seeing many dolphins and manta rays we knew the smoker kings had to be in the area, unfortunately they refused to bite! We did continued to a hard bottom area with a six foot ledge and were able to get a few keeper grouper on deep diving plugs. We did not get the intended King Mackerel but the gag grouper were a nice surprise on our trolling outfits. Overall it was a great day out on the water.