Confession time

Okay - time to fess up about my mess up today.

The king mackerel were moving in just before the big blow came last week so I been watching the weather all week hoping for a break. We got one today. I was ready to head out at o'dark-thirty today... ready to catch the season's first king.

As many of you know, I'm an avid king fisherman and make all my own rigs. I make over 250 in the off season of all types and combinations (dead bait, live bait, with skirts, without, with turbo rattlers, etc). I put each one in a heavy duty zip lock bag and then store the bags in a water tight box. I take no chances when it comes to those rigs - they can make or break you in a tournament.

So today being my first outing of the season, I grab the rig box off of the work bench in my study to put it on the boat where it will stay for the season.

I headed off shore to the first set of box cars (8 miles out), jig up some nice cigar minnows and some small blue fish for bait. Head out another 6 miles to the second set of box cars - there's a nice temp break at a set of ledges just off the box cars - I go to get my rig box to load up my rods.... but where is it??? no box. I'm panicking now - 14 miles off shore, bait busting around me - not a single king mack rig in the boat. Not one!

So I consider breaking out the lures and pulling a Wellcraft Dave type fast troll spread but I also don't have a single wire leader on board (they are in a different, seldom used box that got left behind). I don't want to pull those $10 - 25 lures on mono leaders - they won't last past the first toothy king. Man, I'm dying - no king fishing for me today.

I'm still worried - did I leave the box on the bow and it blew off while towing the boat.... did I loose my whole season worth of rigs......

Nope. When I got home, they were on the kitchen table. As I came down from my study, I noticed my wife had gotten up so I stopped in the kitchen to talk to her, guess I set the rig box down on the table.

Learned a valuable lesson today - always have at least 10 king rigs stashed in the water proof tool box under the console!

I did manage to salvage the trip a bit by pulling some lures for spanish a few miles from the beach. Caught enough for a couple fish dinners this week-end.