King Mackerel fishing - June 2, 2007

I feel like I just received a gift or something. After having great marine weather for over a week, the seas began to get a little rough at the end of this past week. My fishing club's monthly inner club king mackerel tourney was yesterday (first Sat. of each month) so I really wanted to get out. I fish in the smallest boat in the club (19'), so weather is a big factor for me.

We headed out at 5:30am unsure about the seas as the reports didn't look very promising - in fact they said the weather would get worse as the day wore on. We hit the inlet and was met by 4 foot seas on the other side with lots of chop and mixed direction rogue waves (sloppy).

While it was doable in my boat, we decided that going to the originally planned spot 23 plus miles out was not going to be a pleasant prospect so we decided to shorten the trip and head on more of a easterly (ENE in fact) heading because that was a "smoother" ride than the original direction we intended (SSE).

Our first stop 6 miles out was unproductive but after an hour we noticed the wind died sown some and the seas were calmer and all the waves from the same direction. So we took our cue and headed further out. We hit some reefs and ledges in the 14 - 17 nautical mile range.

We caught 4 small kings but no big ones. However I did manage to place 3rd in our club tourney. A few of the other boats in our club caught some nice mahi in that range also. The trip back in was smooth as silk, so we ran in at top speed cause we could see the storm clouds coming.

The weather gave us a window of opportunity - two hours later the wind was howling at 25-30 knots and the rain had begun.