A last minute call from my buddy Vinnie got us back out there for some excellent light tackle kingfishing today.

Bait has been a little hard to come by lately, so we ran on offshore with the plan of live bait fishing with dead bait....got it? It works pretty well, instead of live bait, we use ballyhoo on live bait rigs, and do a little jigging to give them some action. The strikes are the same, all on the surface, and almost as explosive. We found a pretty good spot this morning, and kept at least one fish on the whole time till we had our limit. We had a pretty nice class of fish too, only one citation, a 30 pounder, but lots of 20-25 pounders. By the time we finished up, the wind had started to breeze out of the northeast, and it was raining pretty steady, so my crowd decided to quit while they were ahead, get their fish back for the fish cleaners to get started on, and uh, oh yeah, Vinnie had to walk his dogs. Absolutely great action. A couple boats tried tuna fishing and it sounded like a scattered blackfin and yellowfin. On the way in, we interupted a mating pair of loggerhead sea turtles for a photo, I don't think they were too thrilled about the ''photo op'' though!

We had another beautiful day offshore, king mackerel fishing. The fishing was great again today.

This is one of my favorite seasons of the year, and king mackerel fishing is a great part of the reason. Live bait fishing is a blast with charters, and I enjoy commercial fishing for them as well. Today we had close to 1,450 pounds of fish. Looks like windy for tomorrow, but nice for a stretch after that.

After another three day blow, we finally got out and into some good fishing again today.

We went commercial ''hook and line'' kingfishing again today, and did fairly well, just over 1300 pounds of kings. It was a beautiful day, a little on the chilly side, but the fish were biting, and the seas were calm. We'll be after 'em again tomorrow!

We were fortunate to have a trip today, after three or four days of wind, and a few more coming, we squeezed this one in just right.

My group wanted to try for tuna, so we headed for the tuna grounds. We had fairly good blackfin action early, catching a dozen, but then it dried up. We were plagued with a pretty good dose of current, and eventhough I had some pretty good marks that were likely to have been yellowfins, they wouldn't bite. It was a beautiful day, just the same, and my group seemed happy about fresh tuna for dinner! The king fishing was great today for the boats that tried it.

Things were just as hot out there as they have been, great action to be had.

Today's group fished with me yesterday, so if you saw the report, you know why they were wore out! They wanted to catch king mackerel again today, so we got them what they wanted in easier fashion. We trolled instead of using the live bait tackle, which produces smaller fish, but we still had plenty of action, not to mention easier on already sore backs! After limiting out, we went out to the blue water and hunted around for a few hours, but never found anything. Conditions looked promising for a wahoo, and there was plenty of grass for dolphin habitat, but the north-northeast wind had it scattered bad. The was a wahooo or two caught though, and the one boat that went east searching for tuna wound up with a nice catch of yellowfins and blackfins. Thanks to The Martin's for some more great fishing, and memories!

Today was a little sloppy, 20+ out of the northeast, but the kings didn't mind, and neither did my party!

School was out today, so my group welcomed my son, Simon, to join them. He did great, in spite of the rough conditions. The quality of fish was great today, we had four citations, a 50 pounder, 42, 37, and 30, to go along with a bunch more in the 20s. Simon got in on the action and cranked in a 10-12 pounder himself! Congratulations on a great day of fishing!

The live bait action was plenty good today, and we were able to show our group what Hatteras kingfishing is all about!

It started out a little choppy, but got nicer as the day progressed. We had great live bait action, all of our bites were surface strikes, and plenty of ''sky rocket'' visuals. We had no trouble limiting out, and the class of fish was pretty good. We had a 35 and 32 pounder for citations, but right many in the 20s. We jogged offshore to look around in the blue water, but there was none to be found. We lucked up and caught a pair of nice blackfin tunas out there though. Great day!

This morning started out with light southwest winds, warm weather, and a nice ride offshore.

I chose to head on off to the bluewater this morning, but as I ran along, the water was noticably clearer than yesterday, and I suspected that the kings would probably bite. Nevertheless, we went on without getting live bait, and gave the gulfstream a shot. I found the edge in 65-70 fathoms, and worked it to the northeast for several miles, and back down another five or six. We found two schools of dolphin and wound up with half a limit out of them. It sounded like the kingfishing was pretty good, so we ran back inshore to try for some of them. I found a pretty good little spot, and we managed to catch a limit of them. Not bad, if I do say so myself!

We got an early start this morning, since it was just Justin and myself, but the early start didn't help us much today.

Since I had a last minute cancellation for today, we headed out to make a day's work commercial fishing. Unfortunately, and to my surprise, the water was still pretty dirty. We only caught a few kings, and with the wind breezing up, decided our time would be better spent getting ready for our charters for the next three days. I fully expect things to be back in order tomorrow. A few boats went out to the blue water, and there were still some dolphin out there, as well as a couple wahoos and tunas.

We have been weathered in for the past few days, so it was nice to make it back in the ocean.

The water turned out to be pretty dirty after a few hard days of wind, and that made it difficult to get a king mackerel bite on our live bait. We did start the morning off with a citation size mackerel though, a 32 pounder. All together we caught four kings, but the conditions were straightening out, and the water was clearing up, so I think tomorrow will be good. I got a good report from the bluewater, so I picked up and jogged offshore to the change. After a half hour of scrounging around, I found the mega-school of nice bailers, and it was ''one stop shopping'', just like Wal-Mart. We got our limit in one whack and got out of there! Good fishing!

The kingfishing was as spectacular today as it was yesterday.

We went for the closest thing to a sure bet this morning, after what we saw yesterday. We got our live bait and headed off to the mackerel grounds. It started off a little slower, but once they started skyrocketing on our surface baits, it was as exciting as it gets. Catching a limit was relatively easy to acomplish, and once my group had their fill, we jogged offshore in hopes of finding some dolphin action like yesterday. Conditions weren't as good, and what was a tight color change yesterday had blended out, and there was very little grass on it. We never had a dolphin or wahoo bite after trolling five miles down the change.
One boat had a good catch of blackfins and a handful of yellowfins up to the east.

From beginning to end, today was just about as perfect as they get.

It all started with the sunrise. It was perfect. As we cleared the inlet, in search of live bait for kingfishing, the bait was so abundant that we got all we needed in one set of our net. I spent some time searching for the spot that looked just right to me, but once I found it, we had full on skyrocketing action until we had our limit. We left the mackerel grounds at 10:30. Several miles offshore, I came to a color change, and after a couple hundred yards passed by, we found a rediculous school of dolphin. At 11:30, we had a limit of them as well, and headed for home. On top of it all, it was slick calm, and gorgeous. Thank you LORD!