In one of my previous posts, I talked about that transition here from wintertime sailfishing to summertime meat fishing. This past weekend was our first meat fishing tournament of the year. Kingfish, Wahoo, Cobia, Tuna, and Mahi were the target species for the 60+ boats that were competing for a $10,000 guaranteed first place prize and over $50,000 in optional entry cash prizes.
The weather was great on Saturday, but not so great on Friday which lead to some disappointing fishing for most of the fleet. We stuck it out and the six of us aboard our 31' Contender fished hard throughout the day, catching mostly small kingfish, mahi, blackfin tuna, and bonitas. The minimum weight of a qualifying fish must be 10 pounds, which we struggled to find a fish of that size. There was a great time had by our crew though, despite the fishing not being hot for us. The beer and rum was flowing, laughs were had, and we'll be back in a few weeks for another shot at catching some big ones!
I love to catch kingfish! We free line or slow troll live baits around the buoys off Mexico Beach and Panama City. I've been tempted to give the kite fishing a try up here.
We slow troll livies as well here when there is not enough wind to fly the kites. We don't do that often as we keep a helium system on the boat to blow up large 3' helium balloons and attach to kites for those ultra light wind days (such as this past weekend).
Give it a try sometime up there, I would love to see the results! It's a very intimidating way of learning how to fish, but once you get it going it's really simple and probably the most exciting way to fish live baits!