Crack of Noon Fishing Team

[Jack Hexter]

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I live on the gulf coast of Florida but due to the ridiculous Gulf of Mexico regulations, took my boat to my son's home in Jupiter and left it there. He takes better care of it than I do and I love fishing the East Coast. Anyway, he and I went out of Jupiter on Saturday at the crack of noon. Actually we were a little early as we launched at 11:30, ran south a mile or two along the beach to find some bait and after loading the livewell, went out a mile or so (I just love the east coast depths ) to 80-90' where we started slow trolling the sardines and cigar minnows. After several misses and cut-offs, we put a trace of wire on the rods and started catching kingfish. It was non-stop action with kingfish (about 20 caught) and bonito (about 10 caught) plus I caught a sail when we found a weedline a little deeper and started to drift along it. We also experienced a lot of cut baits but missed hookup's due to short strikes. Adding a stinger resulted no hits on that rod. After releasing the sail, when returning to the weeds, we saw a school of dolphin, but they were moving on and didn't want to play. We checked out a couple spots my had, between 135 and 195, then ran back in to a reef at 65' and anchored. The current was ripping - we were using 10 oz of lead with braid and a 3 way swivel, and still had to let the sinker bounce to keep it on the bottom A couple cutoffs, another king and a big trigger fish rounded out the day when a thunderstorm chased us home at about 6:00.

And all this used a total of 20 gallons of gas for an offshore trip. Try that on the Gulf side. I used to use 10 gallons just to set my pinfish traps

[JRM]

Were you dropping your livies to the bottom or just free-lining them?

[Jack Hexter]

Some were freelined and some had weights, dropped 1/2 way down. All were getting hit, but the weighted ones got hit 2 to 1 over the flatlines. Sail hit a flatline off the rigger tip