Jolly Mon KMT
Ben Galleto with the 36.15 lb. king mackerel that earned the “Par-Five” fishing team the Top Spot in the Jolly Mon King Classic.
A lack of live bait didn’t ultimately prove a problem for Robert Galleto and the “Par-Five” fishing team, as the 36.15 lb. king mackerel they weighed at the Ocean Isle Fishing Center in the 2014 Yellowfin/Yamaha Jolly Mon King Classic handily topped the event’s leaderboard and earned Galleto and his sons Ben and Rob the win.
“We tried to find some live baits on the beach for the first hour,” Galleto explained, “and we couldn’t. So we stopped at a couple places we know to try and jig some baits, but that didn’t work either so we decided to go with dead cigar minnows.”
The trio, fishing aboard a 26’ Bertram center console, hadn’t done any pre-fishing for the tournament, but got an idea of where they didn’t want to be out of reports from the previous week.
“We knew that the last weekend and week there had been a bunch of small fish at the Shark Hole, so we didn’t want to go there,” said Galleto.
The anglers made their first stop of the day at Christina’s Ledge after committing to the dead bait plan, but it proved as productive as their efforts at finding bait.
“We fished there for about an hour and nothing,” the winning captain continued.
Packing it in at the ledge, they moved offshore to the Jungle where they finally found some action.
“We caught a small mackerel almost immediately,” Galleto recalled, “and three more right after that.”
With a quartet of small kings, the anglers again began to talk about heading for a fresh spot, but decided to stick it out.
“We figured if there were small fish there that maybe there would be a big one,” said Galleto.
Soon after they got a strike on a naked cigar minnow trolled long and Ben Galleto grabbed the rod. Their fifth fish at the Jungle proved to be the one that counted, although the crew didn’t realize it at the time.
“It acted funny in the beginning,” Galleto explained. “It made a little run and stopped and then ran back to the boat. We’d caught some sharks there, too, and thought it might be another one.”
After they got the fish close to the boat, however, it took off and the anglers knew it was something more substantial than a snake king or small shark.
The king then made some more substantial runs, leading the crew to follow in the Bertram. It tired fairly quickly, however, and the Galletos were planting a gaff in the fish less than 10 minutes after the bite. The excitement aboard grew when the big king hit the deck.
“We knew from the past that this tournament usually gets a fish between 35-40 lbs. That was a short, fat fish, but we thought it was over 30 lbs.,” Galleto said.
Reasoning that if there was one big fish at the spot, there might be another, the anglers continued trolling, landing seven more kings before making the call to head for the scales.
“We usually don’t like to fish dead bait,” Galleto said, “but it was working that day.”
Scaling a 33.45 lb. king, Chip McAlister and the “Reel Determined” crew earned second place. Team “Wild Wing Café” and Chris Nealon rounded out the top three on the leaderboard with a 33.30 lb. fish.
To learn more about the Jolly Mon King Classic and see a full leaderboard, visit www.oifc.com.
