Ali-Kat Sportfishing: Chicken Rigs, Squid, and Wreck Havoc
Capt. Jason Temple, of Ali-Kat Sportfishing, typically starts all of his trips in the Morehead City area, but since my son James and I were coming up from Wilmington and Jason (at the time) was living in Swansboro, the Cedar Point public boat ramp was the place to meet to head out for a day of mid-November bottom fishing.
Our first stop would be some live bottoms about 25 miles out that Jason had marked on his electronics years earlier while bluefin fishing, and it would be a relatively short and easy trip for his 28’ Twin Vee, one of the three boats in the Ali-Kat fleet. Jason knew the numbers were good, but he hadn’t fished them in about three years. When running out of Morehead, there was no reason to come down this far, but leaving out of Bogue Inlet, the numbers made sense.
Our main target species would be black sea bass, grunts, and vermilion snapper, and Jason’s plan was to have James and I on one side of the boat using chicken rigs, and his Precious Metals business partner Tim Still and mate Adam Hathaway on the other side of the boat dropping down Wreck Havoc jigs made by Precious Metals.
“I don’t like to anchor on top of the sea bass,” Jason explained as he idled around while looking at the screen of his bottom reader, “because you’ll catch 2-3 big ones and then every little one will get in there and you’ll have to fight through them. Whereas if you drift, you’ll keep picking away at the big ones.”
Capt. Jason Temple, of Ali-Kat Sportfishing, and Gary Hurley, of Fisherman’s Post, with some of the beeliners they hooked on both squid chunks and Wreck Havoc metal jigs. They were fishing 25 miles out of Bogue Inlet over live bottom.
Our drift speed at about a half knot was ideal, and Jason saw fish and bait markings all over the live bottom ridges on his display. The four of us dropped down, and the bite, as it often is in the 90’ range, was basically automatic.
Jason had squid chunks ready for the chicken rigs, but he doesn’t always use squid. He also likes albacore and cut up Boston mackerel, and other times he doesn’t take any bait. When it’s just him and his buddies fishing, they prefer jigs.
James and I each had a Daiwa 4000 on a medium heavy rod with 30 lb. braid, a fairly standard setup for non-grouper bottom fishing charters, but what wasn’t as standard was that our chicken rigs were made of fluoro. Jason told us that he uses fluoro because it works, and it also helps that he can get fluoro for about the same price other people can get mono. As for the hooks, he prefers 5/0 Gamakatsu, but he likes Tsunami hooks, too.
James was missing some early fish, whether it was pulling too soon or snatching too hard, but he quickly began reeling and not jerking, and when he did, the circle hooks did their job. He brought up more grunts than anything, and these were the larger grunts that fight hard enough to make you wonder if it may be an under-sized grouper or small jack on the line.
Jason told me that he sees this learning curve a lot, “The hardest problem for most people new to offshore bottom fishing is the circle hooks. People are used to just yanking. I tell them to hold longer until the rod bends. Once they get one or two fish, they get that feeling down pretty quick.”
Meanwhile, Adam and Tim were having success on the other side of the boat with the 3 oz. Wreck Havoc jigs.
“I like the 3 oz. Wreck Havocs for sea bass and beeliners,” Jason said while he watched Tim’s rod tip and tried to guess what species he was hooked to and reeling up. “It seems to be the perfect weight. And we’re using the long skinny model. We designed it so you can reach over and grab the jig to lift the fish out of the water, which is especially good when using lighter line.”
If we were targeting amberjacks or American reds, then Adam and Tim would have been giving the jigs a more violent action, but for these bottom targets, the idea is to just barely bounce the rod tip around.
We spent the morning going from drift to drift. Sometimes we would just repeat a drift, and other times Jason would move over to a new section of bottom to start a new drift. Our box was filling up with black sea bass, grunts, and a couple of triggerfish (even though the triggers typically hold further out), and then James hooked a fish that acted different. This fish had repeated and stronger head shakes as it came up through the water column.
“When I find the vermilions, I’ll always set the anchor, because they’re going to be stacked up on top of each other,” explained Jason as he deployed the trolling motor for a quick spotlock.
James had brought up our first beeliner, as Jason had predicted by the violent rod tip movements during the retrieve, and everyone’s attention on the boat was now focused on this opportunity.
James hooked more beeliners with his squid on the bottom, I was getting beeliner bites at about 10 cranks up from the bottom, and Adam and Tim were hooking them less than 15-feet from the surface.
Our vermilions were, as Jason described, stacked up, “Once you get them all excited and turned on, they’ll start throwing up and biting anything. That’s when they come on up to the top.”
Once the bite turned on, we didn’t need very long to catch our limit. Jason pulled up the trolling motor and went back to his electronics. It was time to move back inshore to finish our limit of sea bass.
A short run put us in roughly 55’ of water, and at our first stop, the bite was furious. Unfortunately, it was only furious with ringtails, so Jason moved further down the live bottom. We found another aggressive bite, but this time we were pulling up 14-18” black sea bass, with some larger “knotheads” mixed in. Both jigs and cut bait worked, and soon we were headed for Bogue Inlet.
Mate Adam Hathaway holds up a black sea bass that hit a Wreck Havoc jig, made by Precious Metals, while bottom dropping in 55′ of water off of Emerald Isle with Capt. Jason Temple of Ali-Kat Sportfishing.
Back at the Cedar Point boat ramp, we divvied up fish and said our good byes.
I said goodbye to Tim, knowing he would be working with Jason over the winter on adding 4 oz. and 6 oz. models of the Wreck Havoc jigs in 2025, as well as continuing on the success of their Blitz jig line, smaller metal jigs designed for spanish, bluefish, and albacore.
I said goodbye to Adam, whose been both a mate for Jason and a full-time student at ECU for the last two years. Adam manages his schoolwork by only mating when he’s available, but Adam must be an excellent student, Jason tells me, because somehow he’s always available.
And I said goodbye to Jason, who in the next couple of weeks would be doing everything from moving into a new house, traveling to Cabo to enjoy some time with his wife while getting his Precious Metal products in stores on the west coast of Mexico, and returning to Morehead to target the bluefin fishery while continuing to run Ali-Kat trips.
If going offshore with an efficient, results-driven captain that lives and breathes fishing sounds like a good day to you, then check out Capt. Jason Temple of Ali-Kat Sportfishing at www.templefamilycharters.com, or give him a call at (252) 503-9494. If bottom fishing doesn’t sing to you, you can join him for a day of trout fishing on his 23’ Aquasport bayboat, or maybe you’d prefer Gulf Stream trolling on the 35’ Bertram.
The point is, if Adam can manage being a full-time student at ECU and still find a good 5 out of 7 days a week to fish, then certainly you can juggle your schedule enough to free up one day this winter or spring.
Don’t just do it for yourself. Do it for the black sea bass ceviche. And you can also find motivation in the mantra at the bottom of every page on the Ali-Kat website: “You were meant to fish.”
