Kingfish Trolling

[MarkARNP]

Wanting to know the best or average trolling spread for kingfish, I have outriggers and down riggers to use. Thanks in advance. Mark

[gottaflylee]

Hi Mark and being your first post, welcome to SFC even though you have been a member for a short time.

Are you looking to slow troll or pull dead baits?

Dead baits and spoons, I will look for 5.5 to 6.5 Kts.

Slow trolling with live baits, I want 1 to 1.5 kts at the most. Sometimes it is better to drift with the wind when live baiting.

[N2theBlue]

Agree with Lee on speeds. Although I go a little slower with cigar minnows and faster with spoons/stretches

With live baits i don't bother with outriggers. I have two rod holders pointing out to the side that I use.

Downriggers - If you are marking bait clouds on the depthfinder put one downrigger at the top of the schools and one at the bottom. Otherwise 1/3 down and 2/3 down.

[clt_capt]

My boat won't go slow enough to troll livies, so I typically take one engine out of gear and troll a spread of cigar minnows with king duster skirts... My trolling speed is between 3.5 and 4.5 kts

One downrigger in each corner, vary the depth between the two until I find a depth that works. 1 Each on the long riggers and one in the shotgun off the flybridge.

[BahamaLure]

and in no way am I contradicting anything written above, which I am certain is good advice, kingfish are a common by catch in the Bahamas while hi speed trolling for wahoo. 14 knots and up, 15" lures, you might be surprised that not only will large kings hit this rig, but little ones under 20 # will too.

[MarkARNP]

Thanks all for the great info. at this point I was planning for slow trolling with live bait I think. Using blue runners and other live bait and maybe big lip diving plugs.

[tprice]

I slow troll pogies most of the time for kings.

I have two downriggers and will do the 1/3 and 2/3 unless I am marking bait balls

I will also run two free lines

Speed is constant in and out of gear to stay about 1.5-2.5, most bites will come on the downriggers for me.

Also may try ribbonfish on the donwrigger, these seem to prodice the big fish a lot of times

[Robja]

We slow troll with live pogies at about 1.5 mph. Blue runners are nice baits but only time we get them is jigging. We fish both outriggers with one long and one a third of the way back. We have one line about half way back in front of the long line. On the other side we will use the downrigger. On the downrigger we like to use a live blue with a double treble rig I make behind the live bait hook. We also use Ribbon fish and live pogies.

As far as the rigs we use most of the times we use naked rigs. I make some with skirts of different colors which seems to help fishing in dirty water like we have out of Southport. I have been using some spinners on some rigs with good luck in clearer water offshore.