by: Capt. Tom Bailas
November brings the largest kingfish tournament in the world to the West Coast of Florida. “King of the Beach” has a spring and fall tournament every year. This is one of the most inexpensive entry fees around with huge payouts and pays 25 places down and has several divisions to enter.
We love to fish it every year with our friends and children. Here is a little story from a few years back. We all know that kingfish season is always normally in the time of year with high winds and rough seas. This particular year the day started out with 2 to 3 ft seas. The kingfish were biting immediately with the first lines we put out. My daughter Kali caught the first fish, about 20 lbs. It is our rule on my boat that ladies always go first for good luck. My wife, Trisha, Kali and her friend Allie all took turns on the fish that day. The bite was so amazing, but the weather was starting to become worse and down came the rain. The seas now turned to about 4-6 ft. We continue trolling live baits keeping our bow into the steady 20 knot winds against us. All of a sudden one of the baits gets slammed by a huge fish. This time it is Trisha’s turn on the rod. As she fights the kingfish for almost 30 minutes, I can finally see color and it is a stud!! After a few more short runs she has the huge kingfish just out of gaffing reachability.
We all now can see the fish is fouled hooked in the shoulder and was pulling away. I immediately loosened the drag and unfortunately, the hooked pulled out and the fish slowly swam off. I can’t begin to tell you the sickness in our stomachs that we all felt as that fish could of easily been the winning fish for sure. So as everyone is still in shock, I put the baits back out in hopes we would get another bite. It must have been only a minute and we got another screaming line running out. This time one of my buddies on the boat grabbed the rod over my shoulder from the rod holder and it slipped out of his hands as it is pouring rain. All I could think about was “there went my favorite lucky rod into the water”. Needless to say, I was not very happy at this moment in time, as we just lost a winning fish and now my favorite rod and reel. The boat went dead silent…. Seconds later the other rod on the far side of the boat went off. This time I yelled “I got it”. As I was reeling in this fish, it felt a little different and was pulling down. About five minutes later, we gaffed a nice-sized kingfish at the boat and brought it in. As I was taking the hook out, there was another line coming out of his mouth.
I looked at Trisha and said “no way” that the same fish ate both of the baits we were trolling and that my lucky rod that flew into to the water was connected to this fish too?. I pulled about 200 yards of line in and could finally see my rod coming up to the boat. I got my Lucky Rod and Reel back and we ended up having a really good day out of the craziness that had occurred.
Overall, we had lots of kingfish, a blackfin tuna and a cobia. Not a bad day of fishing. The stinker of the story is the winning kingfish was only 38lbs due to crazy weather conditions. We all know that the fish we lost was over 40 lbs, but we will get him another day. We have the memories and a story to tell for years to come.
Remember to always follow state and federal regulations. Be courteous of other boaters and keep only what you can eat.Happy Fishing!! Captain Tom WWW.TNTFISHINGCHARTERS.COM Or Facebook @TNTFISHINGCHARTERSVENICE 941-587-2028
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