Added on Thursday, August 13, 2009  Fish Post

All In With Kings Over ‘Phins

“Christmas Rock is right here,” Capt. Adam Powell said, pulling back on the throttles to glance back at his father’s frame comfortably positioned in a beanbag in the boat’s starboard cockpit corner. “You want to check it out, Dad?”

“No, keep it going to that spot where we’ve been catching them,” Capt. Andy Powell replied from his relaxation station. “We’ve been tearing up the dolphin and kings at a spot offshore,” he continued, turning to Gary Hurley and I. “We’re going to head out there and get on them.”

Gary and I had met Adam and Andy, who run All In Charters out of Surf City, and a favorite fishing friend, Jodie Gay, of Blue Water Candy Lures, at the Powells’ house in Surf City before dawn that July morning. We had then driven up Topsail Island, putting the “All In,” a 2380 Sailfish center console, in the water at the boat ramp under the island’s north bridge. With the tournament 23’ (more like 28’) boat in the water, Andy had run the boat north up the ICW, turning the wheel over to his son and commandeering a beanbag after heading through the narrow cut in the bar at New River Inlet.

Andy had been promising fast action with some offshore pelagics to us for much of the spring, but our busy schedules and strong winds had conspired to push the trip back until mid-July.

We’d finally arranged a date with Jodie and the Powells that seemed to agree with the weatherman, and since the father/son team had been on the fish strong in the previous weeks, as Andy had reported to me the several times I’d recently run into him at East Coast Sports, I was excited to be heading for their recent honey hole.

Adam gunned the Sailfish’s twin 150’s, making short work of the run east at 40-45 mph in a lazy 2-3’ sea, and we were soon gliding off plane at an area 30 miles out of the inlet in around 100’ of water that consistently holds bait, according to the All In captains.

As soon as the boat came off plane, father and son traded places, and Jodie and Adam became a blur of activity in the Sailfish’s cockpit.

“We’re going to pull dead baits today,” Andy explained, as he took the helm. “We’ve actually been catching more fish on dead baits than live lately. It happens like that a lot.”

Jodie and the younger Powell produced a bag of cigar minnows that East Coast Sports had generously provided for the trip, and they hurriedly pinned them to the many-hued Blue Water Candy dead bait rigs we’d be using.

“This one isn’t even on the market yet. It’s the UF special,” Jodie, a relentless lure experimenter, said as he produced a blue/orange colored skirt out of the overstuffed rig bag he’d brought along.

“We were calling this one Private Stock, but we just started selling them, too,” the lure maker continued with a grin, holding up a skirt that seemed to change its iridescent shades through a spectrum of pinks, purples, blues, oranges, and more as the early light hit it at changing angles.

After Jodie and Adam deployed a spread of cigars under a variety of new and established BWC colors on flat lines, long lines, and the downriggers (I was trying to help, but in reality almost surely slowed the process down), they broke out another colorful addition to the spread.

Heavier than the live bait outfits that bore our other offerings, the 30 lb. outfit also had a dead bait rig, but this one trailed a Blue Water Candy spreader bar. Four lines dangling from the spreader featured lightweight Bling (an iridescent stranded material incorporated into many BWC lures) skirts.

Once deployed, the Bling bar added an even more attractive dimension to the spread, the skirts swaying seductively behind the bar and seemingly not only catching but magnifying the early morning sunlight.

We hadn’t completed our first pass around the Powells’ spot before a pair of the rods dipped and their clickers sounded briefly. The green flashes visible in the spread let us know that dolphin were on the feed in the area. Unfortunately, the fish failed to find the hooks, and with the diminutive size of the flashes, the captains knew why.

“Peanuts, Dad,” Adam said, cranking in a dead bait rig to reveal a cigar minnow whose tail had been chomped by one of the immature ‘phins. Two more passes drew more of the same, but these fish found the hooks, and Gary and I each cranked in a dolphin.

The fish were small; however, as most know, dolphin develop attitude at an early age, and the little ‘phins protested their situation with several disgruntled leaps each.

Keeping the boat at trolling speed in an attempt to attract a few more bites while we fought our fish, Andy took an early opportunity to talk some trash to the newspaper guys.

“Do you see how big those fish are?” he queried, grinning behind the console. “Get them to the boat. What are you guys doing?”

We were soon able to comply with the captain’s orders, and each swung a mini-mahi over the Sailfish’s gunwale a moment apart.

As they reset the baits and I again attempted to assist, I queried Adam and Jodie about the minutia of the All In trolling spread; drag settings, bait distances, downrigger depths, etc., and was feeling like a more productive member of the team after a few more peanuts harassed our rigs and I helped redeploy the baits.

As Andy took another turn around the dimples on the ocean’s surface produced by a school of surfacing baitfish, our port downrigger popped free of its release clip 50’ below the boat, and something more substantial than a peanut dolphin made the reel’s clicker sing a much higher tune than we’d heard yet.

“King mackerel!” Jodie and Andy said simultaneously as Gary grabbed the live bait rod from the downrigger.

This fish indeed had a little more fire to it than the peanuts, and Andy slowed the boat down as the rest of us cleared the spread so Gary could fight his fish unobstructed. The fish’s first run ended about the same time we got the spread in, and Gary commenced to gaining back some of the line the fish had burnt off.

The fish stayed down, turning back towards the boat and forcing Gary to reel furiously to keep the line from going slack and giving his adversary a chance to shake the hooks.

A few more runs, each a touch shorter than the previous one, delayed Gary’s progress, but the battle was clearly turning in his direction a few minutes after the strike.

It wasn’t long before we got a glimpse of the flashy fish, still deep in the clear blue water, and Jodie and Andy’s hypothesis was confirmed as a king mackerel slowly began its trademark death spiral a few dozen feet below the boat.

Gary worked the fish upward as its lazy laps grew tighter, and Adam soon interrupted the rhythmic spiral with a perfect shot from an 8’ gaff. The king was in the 10 lb. class, as since we’d been trolling for all of 20 minutes, I was confident that the Powells’ promise of fast king and dolphin action was more than idle talk.

Jodie and Andy went about getting the baits back in the water as I snapped a few quick photos of Gary’s fish, and by the time I’d returned to the cockpit, the same downrigger snapped upright, then bent down, the clicker singing the same tune it had on Gary’s fish.

I grabbed this rod and held on while the fish ran. My fish came up a bit faster than Gary’s, but proved no more willing to come to the boat, choosing instead to fight it out with quick runs on top.

When I thought I was about to be able to work the king into gaff range, avoiding the prolonged up and down death circles, the king decided otherwise, diving deep below the boat and doing a perfect imitation of Gary’s fish.

Each circle brought it closer to the boat, however, and Adam’s 8’ death hook soon found its second victim of the day.

Returning to trolling, we quickly landed several more peanuts and another schoolie king before the spreader bar apparently proved too tempting to resist.

A splashy strike at the cigar minnow trailing the bar revealed a much larger green flash than the peanuts had been making, and Gary took the trolling outfit as a gaffer dolphin took to the air, clearly dissatisfied with its intended meal. The sun, much higher now than it had been an hour before, reflected a dazzling array of colors off the Bling skirts as they trailed Gary’s dolphin through a set of greyhounding leaps.

As the whitewater calmed down from the fish’s above water antics, the dolphin used its broad flanks against the angler, planing at a 90 degree angle to the pressure Gary was applying with the rod. Seemingly regaining some strength, the fish took another angry leap before running off a bit more of the fluorescent yellow line.

Fortunately for Gary, the ‘phin couldn’t hold speed against the reel’s drag, and he turned the fish, gaining line back quickly when Andy banked the boat towards the dolphin.

Ready as always with the gaff, Adam waited for the dolphin to come within range. It must have sensed its impending fate, though, as it stroked off another few yards of line and stubbornly refused to come within range.

Finally, the young captain leaned out and impaled the dolphin, and the crew posed for a quick shot of the fish and the spreader bar that did it in before resetting the spread.

The action continued unabated for the next hour, and a few more boats showed up as we landed several more kings on the downrigger and dealt with constant harassment by the peanuts, putting a few more in the boat and jovially cursing those that missed our hooks.

I was bent over and grabbing a sandwich out of the console when something took an interest in the long line trailing the live bait rod in the T-top’s port rod holder.

I reached up, somehow not slamming my head on the T-top while grabbing the rod (a frequent problem when a bite gets me overly excited), and grabbed the rod as our second gaffer dolphin left the water 50 yards off the transom corner.

This fish was a near-twin of Gary’s gaffer, but on live bait gear instead of the heavier trolling rod he’d fought his fish on (though the limited drag one can apply to a treble-hooked bait rig evens the playing field somewhat). The light rod bounced with the dolphin’s aerial antics, bending over hard when the fish decided to stop showing off and take a hard run away from the boat.

Like our first gaffer and most dolphin, the fish continued its battle on the surface, alternately turning its compressed body sideways to the line’s pull to bring the fight to a stalemate, then turning away and tearing line from the reel.

The fish eventually tired, relenting to the oppressive pressure of the pair of hooks in its mouth, and I regained line. Adam was too fast to give the dolphin a chance for a last minute run, and sank the gaff in my dolphin as it swam up the boat’s starboard side.

After resetting the spread yet again, with a constantly rotating cast of Blue Water Candy skirt colors coming out of Jodie’s bag(all of them effective) to dress up our cigar minnows, we caught a few more peanuts and small kings before the action slowed a bit.

A warship had come onto the horizon a few hours earlier, and it stayed in the area, moving back and forth in a tight swath of ocean. The Navy vessel decided to open the lines of communication and firmly told us that it was time to vacate the area, as they’d begin taking target practice shortly.

“He’s not kidding,” Andy said from the helm, dialing up a new spot in his GPS. “I was ready to go try some stuff inshore anyway.”

We joined the fleet of boats streaking away from the military ship, and after another short run at 40+ mph, joined a boat circling one of the Alphabet Buoys off Onslow Beach.

Neither we nor the other boat hooked up after a quarter-hour’s troll, and Andy was quick to make the call to head for a spot even closer to land.

“We’re going to the BK Ledges,” the captain explained as we prepared for a short run. “We found these ledges a couple years ago, and they almost always produce.”

“BK stands for big king,” Adam revealed as we began to put baits out at the spot around 12 miles offshore.

Our first bite proved that the BK ledges are aptly named. After Gary battled something for ten minutes with a lot more speed than anything we’d yet caught, we got a cruel glimpse of a king around 30 lbs. before the hooks pulled a dozen yards beneath the boat. Such is king mackerel fishing, as the fish’s slashing strikes often lead to poor or foul hookups, but the sight of the big fish had us fired up.

There was no lull in the action here, and as we circled several bait balls that had formed over the ledges, we got a bite every time our baits passed the schools. Gary and I battled kings, including a pair of doubleheaders, until we’d finished out our five man limit of 15 fish, but unfortunately none were quite as substantial as the first.

With a limit of kings in the boat and the fish boxes’ remaining space filled with dolphin, we decided to head for land as Jodie mulled the possibility of fishing the BK Ledges in a king tournament he was fishing in a few days.

Heading back to the Powells’ after we put the boat on the trailer, Andy and Adam demonstrated a way to clean king mackerel, something of a cross between steaking and filleting the fish, that removes all of the fish’s dark meat and, according to Andy, all the fishy flavor that many people associate with kings.

“Try this, and it’s going to turn kings into one of your favorite fish,” Andy said, explaining the method as Adam demonstrated on one of our smaller kings.

“I’m not so sure,” I waffled.

“I said exactly the same thing before I tried it like this,” Jodie said heaving another king to me from the fish box.

I was somewhat dubious, as king mackerel had been up to this point one of my least favorite fish, but the resulting king nuggets were delicious, and I had to admit that Jodie and the All In guys were absolutely right. I’ll leave describing the cleaning method up to them, as I haven’t put it into practice yet, but the next king mackerel I catch will be meeting the same fate.

With a cooler full of king and dolphin fillets, Gary and I headed back to Wilmington, arriving home in the mid-afternoon. We love nothing more than fishing, but it’s always a great feeling to put a dent in the fish population quickly, limit out, and get home early enough to plan and cook a fresh fish dinner by a reasonable hour.

The Powells specialize in live and dead baiting for dolphin, kings, sailfish, and more in the summer months, and they chase Gulf Stream predators like wahoo and tuna in the spring and fall months as well. A trolling trip with them should be on the list for any angler looking to learn more about live or dead-baiting while putting some serious meat in the box.

Interested anglers can reach Andy at (910) 592-8495, Adam at (910) 990-5485, or visit their website at www.allincharters.com for more information.