Anna Maria Island Spring Kingfish

Spring Has Sprung!
March 12, 2017
King Mackerel, Spanish Mackerel
—Around Tampa Bay and Anna Maria Island, fishermen usually relate the arrival of spring with two events: shiners in the grass flats and skyrocketing king mackerel. Well, shiners are in the grass and we caught our first kingfish of the season yesterday. I guess it’s springtime!
—I have been fishing around 10 miles offshore on most of the charter fishing trips lately, using live shrimp and other frozen baits. Snapper and hogfish have been the main targets. Yesterday, in addition to live shrimp, the live well was also filled with shiners, in hopes that we could find our first kingfish of the season.
—We started by bottom fishing and were catching mangrove snapper. All the while, I was regularly throwing a few shiners out behind the boat. As hoped, it wasn’t long until a kingfish skyrocketed out of the water about 100 yards away. A wave of excitement swept over our 26′ SeaCat. The bottom fishing quickly ended and we started casting free-lined shiners. Within minutes we had multiple hook-ups and continued to catch kings on almost every cast for well over an hour. There were some beautiful, big spanish mackerel mixed in with the kings too. We actually stopped fishing for them in mid rally because we had some in the fish box for dinner and even though they are thrilling to catch, they are tough to release unharmed. We’ll go get them another day.