King Mackerel on the Fly

The first pink rays of the sun are tickling the eastern horizon.

SSSsss...plunk.

Fly-line hisses across the obsidian-colored morning water, and blue, green, and yellow electric sparks of bioluminescence streak living lightening across the water.

SSSsss...plunk.

The first strike is short. The only evidence a fish even took a look at the olive and silver popping fly is a clear-black watered boil on the calm surface. A coronal halo of glowing life skirts the peripheries of the boil, and in moments the surface settles back down, and one at a time the luminescence fades and twinkles into nothingness with the morning stars above.

SSSsss...

The fly leaves the water without a sound, but the fly-line hisses angrily as it breaks free of the Gulf's surface tension. The line rolls out in a loop behind the angler through the gray-pink light. Water beads look like fractured diamonds as the line goes taut in the backcast and they continue their projected trajectory. The head of the popper whistles quietly as it crosses the transom of the boat on the forward cast. The fly lands with a splat.

The fly lands right where it had just left. The angler bends at the knees and his left leg is slightly forward of his right. He leans forward at the waist. His shoulders hunch, and he is silhouetted black against the rising sun. His fingers inch up the fly-line between the reel and the first rod-eye. As his fingers hit the eye, his index finger and thumb pinch the clear fly-line. He gives three quick, plunking tugs.

The first strike is like the other-violent, but short. The second strike begins about ten feet from the fly. Coming low and silver a streak breaks from the water and glides a foot over the contour of the water. The fish enters the water with dead precision on the fly. The line goes tight, and the angler's forearms bulge. The flexors and extensors beneath the skin etch deep cuts beneath bulging veins providing adrenaline and needed oxygen-infused blood for the struggle ahead.

The hiss of the fly-line is replaced with the scream of machine laden drag under stress, and the last of the clear fly-line passes through the end of the rod-tip with a distinctive PLING! as the knot connecting fly-line to backing passes through the air into the darkened water. The downward surge ends, and the fish turns running parallel to the boat's gunnel. The hissing fly-line returns, but this time it's accompanied by a twelve-inch wake as the king mackerel works to gain side purchase against the angler.

This is the first of twenty-two king fish on fly for the day. She's a little one, only tapping the 60-pound Boga at twenty-one pounds. We release her, and she disappears as quickly as she struck.

Welcome to the world of fly-fishing for kings. It's not for the weak, squeamish (there will be blood: the fish's and yours), or the uninitiated. I've seen broken fingers and wrists on my boat from the first blistering run. I've witnessed world-class reel drags turned into a mass of burned and smoking cork. I've watched countless, literally countless, numbers of rods reduced to splinters. The amazing part is the humming resonance the stressed carbon fiber or synthetic material du-jour obtains right before explosion. I watched as one well-respected fly-fisherman and TV personality with a number of IGFA world records simply lost his rod when his first king took off under an anchored shrimp boat. I give him the fish was in the forty-pound class, but he was simply not ready with the speed or violence for which the king fish happily doles out on unsuspecting anglers.

Finding willing kings for the fly is not hard. In fact, it is the easiest offshore fishing on fly, besides maybe a heard of blitzing blues or stripers or Little Tunny, one can find. Kings frequent passes, rigs, culling shrimp boats, and anywhere with a decipherable bottom structure. Getting them to the boat is one thing, but often easy to do. Getting them to hit a fly is much easier than casting or getting a lone, trophy Little Tunny hanging on the edge of a school to take one's offering. Getting them to stick to the fly is another animal altogether.

There are essentially two methods to get a king to show for you. The first, purest, and dirtiest way is to chum. But you're not looking to fill the water column with a Quint Brody-Jaws-Searching envious flood of fish parts and oil. No, we're looking for small bits and chunks of shiners and other silver baitfish. The best method is one- to two-inch chunked fish thrown overboard at about five or six pieces a minute and not all at once. I like to throw the chunks down hard on the surface to make a little noise and get those big predatory eyes looking up. While I'm chumming, I have my anglers soaking sinking lines of different weights to cover the water column at ten foot differences from the bottom to the surface. I use a Puglisi-style baitfish pattern with a silver-underbody tied with a light blue back and a white bottom. Once the trail of silver floating chunk gets down to the kings in the water column, you'll begin to see silver comet streaks darting across your stern. Once this starts, the sinking lines give way to floating lines with poppers. This is when the fireworks really begin.

The second method, the tried and true bait and switch, is arguably more fun than chumming, but maybe not as pure as purists will like. I like to take a silver Super Spook and remove all the hooks. I cast as far out as I can and just rip the lure across the surface. Kings will break their backs to hit whatever else hits the water around a wounded baitfish. Not to mention, the aerial acrobatics on a hook-less topwater over a pissed-off king are always crowd pleasers.

Your chosen structure really won't effect your method of attracting fish to the boat; however, if you are working the back of a culling shrimp boat, I recommend hanging about two- to three-hundred yards behind the boat in the morning and shortening your distance from the shrimper as the sun rises and the fish look for shade.

When I first started hitting kings on fly, my hook-up rates were very low. I can remember getting hundreds of strikes a day and no takes. Or if the fish did stick, it was only on for a few moments. That was until I had an epiphany one day-or rather a mistake of genius, which is usually the mother of invention. My buddy Jesse and I were fishing with tube flies-flies tied on a tube rather than a hook-and I left my j-hooks at the dock. Since this was my offshore boat, I had a ton of circle hooks for snapper. Jesse and I looked at each other, shrugged, and tied on circle hooks. A peculiar thing happened: we caught a dozen or so kings a piece, and I've been a circle hook fan for all my flies since.

The physics behind how a circle hook works still confounds me, and I have a masters in biomechanics, but they work. I found with the quick, slashing, violent strike of the king j-hooks were simply resting flat in the kings mouth and chance more than skill affected the hook-up rate. Once the king hit the circle hook, though, the onus of hook-up was placed on the king and the side-mouth hooking wonder of the circle hook did its job.

The best flies for kings are deceiver patterns tied on tubes, but I always have a pre-cut popper head to slide onto the tippet to convert any old deceiver or half-and-half into topwater, plunking machine. There ain't nothing like watching a king hit on the surface. Well, except maybe feeling the burn on your palm as you try to slow your disappearing backing.