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Jesse's Hunting > Fishing Articles > Fishing Articles Archives > Team Done Deal Places in Top Ten
Team Done Deal Places in Top Ten
Mike Gilmore - JHO ProStaff
- Pensacola, FL
July 25, 2004
Nice King!
Mike Gilmore holds up a smoker king! |
Team Done Deal arrived at Cypress Cove Marina in Venice, LA on June 24th to compete in the third tournament of the year on the Mercury Kingfish Tournament Trail.
Stephen, Blake and I were real excited about this one, because it was a two-day aggregate tournament. This meant that each boat would weigh their biggest fish the first day and then return to weigh their biggest fish the second day. The boat with the largest total weight of both fish combined after two days would win the big jackpot of $12,500.
As with any tournament we prepared our gear at the marina the first night. This began by checking the line on all of our rigs. We currently use seven foot Key Largo brand rods equipped with Shimano TLD 25 lever drag reels. They make the perfect combination by being strong enough to handle big kingfish but also limber enough to allow the fish to fight without putting too much stress on them. Each reel is spooled with thirty-pound monofilament line.
We then tied leaders on every rod. The leaders consist of single strand 69# wire, tied with a haywire twist and completed with a barrel roll. Each leader is about four feet long, with a barrel swivel attached at the top end and a 5/0 single hook at the other end. We then attach what we call a stinger hook to the single hook on the leader. We tie a small strand of wire to the single hook-eye and attach a treble hook to the other end. The single hook is hooked through the nose of large live-bait, and the treble hook is attached high in the bait’s back (being careful to avoid puncturing the spine). The stinger is extremely important and prevents short striking fish from getting away without being hooked. Several extra leaders are tied and placed individually in small Ziploc bags to prevent tangles. 
King Rig w/ Stinger
The stinger rig is a popular live-bait rig for king mackerel fishermen. The treble hook in the back is added security for short-striking fish. |
With the rigs prepared for a day of fishing, we went to sleep, dreaming of catching monster kingfish.
The next morning, after enjoying the complimentary continental breakfast, we hit the docks to await the start of the tournament along with seventy other boats. At 0600 we pulled out of Cypress Cove and ran the Mississippi river until we reached Baptiste Collette pass. Coming out of the pass we began a sixty-mile run to the oilrigs south of Pascagoula, Mississippi.
We arrived at the rigs and began the bait catching process. We used small Crippled Herring Jigs to catch large hardtails schooling around the rig legs. In a short time we had a livewell full and began deploying baits to catch kingfish. Two methods are used to put the baits into play. The first method consists of putting what we call flylines out. In this case you would hook up a hardtail and troll him slowly along the surface behind the boat. We normally put out two of these baits, one real close to the rear of the boat and the second one way back behind the prop wash.
In addition to the surface baits, we put one down deeper on a downrigger. The downrigger is equipped with a twelve pound lead ball and a release clip. To set this rig, one person throws the bait out behind the boat with a rod and reel, while the other person attaches the line to the release clip of the downrigger. The weight of the downrigger then is dropped to a specified depth pulling the live hardtail down with it. This allows you to troll a live-bait at any depth you please. Upon getting a strike the line snaps loose from the release clip and you fight the fish on the rod and reel. The downrigger is reeled up and pulled out of the water so that it wont get in the way of fighting the fish.
Once the baits were deployed we quickly began to catch mediocre sized kingfish in the twenty five to thirty pound range. We kept one of these fish and iced him down in the event we didn’t catch anything else. We would at least have a points fish to weigh.
At nearly 1030, Stephen screamed, "Holy Mackerel," as he gawked out the rear of the boat!
I turned just in time to see large kingfish had skied nearly thirty feet in the air knocking the live hardtail out of the water. Stephen went to the rod and instantly released the drag so the fish would not feel any tension. As the kingfish fell back toward the water we saw the bait going the opposite direction in the air. We knew he had not connected with his target.
Instantly, the kingfish skied again, nearly twenty feet in the air and this time we saw the wire leader hanging out of his mouth. Stephen waited until the fish hit the water and the line went tight, then hauled back to set the hook while Blake and I scrambled to pull in the other two lines.
Nearly fifteen minutes later Stephen brought the fish boat side and I gaffed him to pull him aboard. This one was a much nicer fish than we already had, so we placed him in an insulated fish bag and iced him down.
Throughout the day we rig-hopped in search of a larger kingfish but couldn't seem to boat anything larger than the one we already had on ice. We fished until nearly 1500, and then began our journey back to the scales.
We had estimated the fish to weigh less than thirty-five pounds. When we arrived back at the marina several fish had been weighed in already. Blake took the kingfish to the scale while Stephen and I moored the boat. A few minutes later Blake returned with the official weigh slip indicating that the fish weighed 39.49 pounds. This was much more than we thought and placed us in 7th place at the close of day one of the tournament.
In high spirits, we cleaned the boat and grabbed some supper before heading into the hotel.
The next morning we planned to go to the same area to try for a larger kingfish. An hour and a half after leaving the marina we had baits in the water. After bringing in several fish in the high twenties, we boated another nice king, which we estimated to be over thirty pounds.
He turned out to be the biggest of the day.
We began our run back to the scales early, to make sure we made the closing at 1500. We felt good about this fish since it was an aggregate tournament and we had already weighed a nice fish the first day. While we secured the boat, Blake took the kingfish to get it weighed. He returned to inform us that the fish weighed 33.55 pounds. This gave us a total weight of 73.04 pounds for two days.
We cleaned the boat up and awaited the closing of the scales to see if we had placed in the top ten again. A short time later we were told that we had taken the 9th place spot with our aggregate of fish and had earned $550.00 prize money. High fives were in order!
Team Done Deal had placed top ten again and moved up through the Southern Kingfish Association standings for Division seven. Now we were ranked 12th in our division, making us eligible for the national championship tournament. We had slowly climbed the ladder and done better each tournament. Each tourney was a learning experience and we’d had more good luck than bad so far.
The Alabama Deep Sea Fishing Rodeo is our next tournament on the trail on July 16th in Dauphin Island, Alabama. Stay tuned for the next update as Team Done Deal, sponsored by JHO, fishes their way to the national championship.
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