Column - October 16, 2006

The Topsail Offshore Fishing Club holds an annual king mackerel tournament that pulls in anglers from all over the state as well as some from other states. This year the tournament was held the second weekend in October, a shift from its former August date. This later date was to avoid conflict with other tournaments.

This year they also added the Sloop Point Volunteer Fire Department as the beneficiary of profits from the sale of tournament advertising. In turn, the VFD helped in the planning and execution of the tournament.

More than 100 boats entered this year’s tournament, including one from yours truly. My little 19-foot center console craft was dwarfed by some of those big 30- and 35-foot boats, but with calm weather and the kings in close to shore this time of year, it was worth a shot. There were a number of other smaller boats with the same idea.

Most king mackerel tournament fishermen prefer live bait; large menhaden is probably the top bait choice for most teams. Finding good bait of any sort proved to be the big challenge this year -- the heavy rains last month caused many of the baitfish to move out of the area due to the lower salinity levels. With the cold weather pending, it seems they just kept heading south.

My team knew this, so we headed out Friday looking for a reliable source of menhaden. All we could find where smaller ones, so we opted to go a different route. We spent the afternoon trolling and jigging for blue fish, which we then penned up to use on Saturday. This proved to be a good decision, as many teams wasted what proved to be the best bite period of the day catching bait. We also spent part of the day fishing some different areas to help determine where the big kings might be found.

Tournament rules call for 7 a.m. to be the earliest lines can be in the water. We left the dock at 5:30, picked up our penned blue fish and headed for some last-minute checks for menhaden. Finding none, we headed out of the Topsail Inlet and motored to our fishing spot.

We arrived at 6:55 and spent the last 5 minutes before the tournament’s official start making last minute checks of our gear and rigs. Satisfied all were well, we put out our first line at exactly 7 a.m.

One other boat was also there with us at the start, and by 8:30 there were 21 boats in that same area. But most were too late for that spot.

We had our first strike before 7:30 and our last one of the morning before 8:00. We hooked the fish we ended up weighing at 7:43. It was a 15.5-pound fish, far less than the hoped for 30-pound smoker. Still, it gave us confidence we had made the right choices and lifted our spirits as we fished the rest of the day.

We did get a couple of strikes in the afternoon, but no smokers. So we headed to the weigh-in with our 15.5- pound fish. We finished 39^{th out of 109 boats -- only 51 of those entered even weighed in a fish. Not bad for our first KMT as a team! We had a blast to boot!}

^{Congratulation to the Ocean Isle Fishing Team, which took first place with a 45.5-pound smoker! And kudos to the Mount Maker team, which finished 6th overall in a 17-foot boat -- the smallest boat in the tournament to weigh a fish.}

Catching report

The kings are all over. From the beach out to the 15 mile range there are plenty of 15-20 pound fish to be caught with some smokers mixed in as well. False Albacore, small Spanish, and blues are also being caught. In the 17 – 30 mile range the grouper bite has been ON. Some nice grunts and black bass are also being caught on the bottom.

Inshore the drum, grey trout and flounder bite has been steady. The speckled trout bite is picking up with the recent cold snap. Live finger mullet and shrimp are still available for bait. Many folks are using mirro lures, X-raps and gulp to target the specks.

Vinita at Surf City Ocean Pier reports that black drum catches have been steady using cut shrimp. She also reports catches of small pompano and some flounder in the daytime with sea mullet biting at night. Anglers at Sea View Pier are catching sea mullet and black drum. Folks fishing from the Jolly Roger pier have been catching pompano, black drum and sea mullet.

Tight lines to all!