Sometimes, even when you “fish” for a living, it’s important to take a day off to spend time with those who are very important to you. My fiance Katie was extremely jealous of my trip to the east side earlier in the week (you know, the one with the two kings in the 40s and the blackfin tuna) so I promised to get her over there if we ever had a nice day. Well, the morning started off nice, but today was one of those days in which I wish i had a weatherman on board – so i could tie a line to his ankles and throw him overboard as a chum bag. We started off with very light NW winds in the morning but the “light and variable switching to W” afternoon winds ended up blowing a full 10-15 out of the SW. It was a bumpy ride home…

Anyway, we scooted through the slot with ease (shallowest water at low tide was 16 feet) and made our way towards some live bottom in deep water. Every spot was simply on fire – we passed 5 boats at 30 minute rock all hooked up, the same at 1700 rock and so on. When we reached our destination, it didn’t take long. Our lines were screaming as soon as they went into the water – mostly small snake kings that fought very well in the 70 degree water. Next up were the big AJs that kept smashing our downrigger baits – katie spent about 30-40 minutes pulling in the first reef donkey and under 30 minutes with the others. King after kings took our baits – today the magic bait was frozen baits over live pogies. Our biggest fish (a nice smoker in the mid-30s) took a frozen chub. We released all fish but one of the smallest kings – an 8 pounder we kept for dinner.

We lost several nice “screamers” on the downrigger including something that was simply huge – whatever it was took a giant pogie at 50 feet, took about 100yds of line and stopped before taking another 300-400yds and stopped again. We tried to chase it down, but it went the way of all the big fish and broke off – of course. Wasn’t an AJ – maybe a big wahoo? Bluefin Tuna? Well, that’s the fun of fishing…

As the wind began to pick up, we decided to call it an early day after pulling in 8 nice kings and a few big AJs…ride home took twice the time as the way out.

Today also had the flavor of a nice day gone bad – meaning we saw many boats that don’t belong in the ocean in rough, building seas. One of them was a 17ft Welcraft CC (with very low gunnels) roughly 30 miles from Beaufort inlet trolling for kings on the EAST SIDE – there were also 5 people aboard including two boys probably under 10 (not wearing life vests, i might add). As it started to get ugly, I asked if they wanted to follow me in – but they wouldn’t have it. Folks, some of you need to be a bit more careful…

But anyway, it was good fishing all around – I include the last photo to show why it’s so much fun to tail kings instead of gaff them (ie, why i call it grabbing a chainsaw by the blade).