Kingfish Capers - Part 2

Kingfish lollies

Using a jaw grip instead of a gaff or net is a good way to hang onto kingfish, but gloves are a good idea.

Freshly caught squid is one of the very best baits at times

In many cases the smaller, high-strength hooks will get more bites.

It pays to use heavy tackle as you never know how big the fish will be, and the territory below can be unforgiving.

The flutter bait will turn on some pretty big kingfish when live baits are scarce.

Piper are kingfish lollies, but they must be fresh. Dragging a bait net is one way to get a supply. (Photo: Captain Bucko)

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Part two of a three-part series dealing with inshore kingie fishing.

Catching inshore kingfish on dead or cut baits can be a bit like getting kids to eat their vegetables. Package it up the right way and you will get a great response, but offer it up wrong and you might as well be selling steaks at a vegan convention.
Without a doubt, inshore kingfish possess very predatory natures and prefer live prey. They will, however, happily take dead and cut baits if they’re presented in an attractive way. In fact, many really good kingie fishermen specialise in using dead baits to target inshore kingfish.

The first thing I would stress is that the fresher the bait the better it is. Ideally the bait is caught on the day you go fishing and hasn’t been frozen; kingfish definitely turn up their noses at old, stinky, freezer-burnt bait. So look after your bait: keep it chilled in a cooler, not left baking in the sun.
The first technique uses what are without doubt my favourite dead bait for kingies – piper. As I previously mentioned, they’re best netted or caught fresh on the same day. Fresh piper are kingfish ‘lollies’, and kings will feed on them happily even when turning their noses up at all other dead baits.

There are ways to fish with piper dead baits that also help you attract strikes. A simple way of rigging piper is on a strong 7/0 hook attached to two-metres of 60–80lb trace. Place the hook straight up through the piper’s centre beak and skull. The beauty of this simple rig is that it can be cast, trolled or drifted.
The technique I prefer is a cast and retrieve, either skipping the piper or imparting a swimming action to the bait. The key thing to remember is to either drop your rod or even free-spool the bait when you get a strike so the bait isn’t pulled out of the kingie’s mouth. You can add a keeper hook to this rig if the kingfish are really crashing the bait and you’re missing hook-ups. Also, a small ball sinker added right on the nose of the bait is handy if fishing in a strong current or you want to fish the bait a little deeper.

The next technique to try when you run out of live baits involves ‘butterflying’ dead kahawai or mackerel by cutting up one side of the fish to create a flapping fillet, before breaking the backbone. This bait is then placed on a Black Magic GZ 6/0-11/0 hook attached to 130-200lb trace, with a 100-200g sinker mounted right on top of it. (The size/gauge of trace, hook and sinker used is dependent on the size of your bait: the bigger the bait, the gruntier the gear you can get away with.) Be sure to position the hook so the barb and point face towards the bait’s mouth. Appropriately called a ‘flutter bait’, this bait flaps and flutters in the water.

The best way to fish these baits is by either drifting or anchoring over your spot, and lowering the bait to a metre or so off the bottom. Place the rod in the holder on half-strike and let the wave action move the bait. Strikes using this technique are often very aggressive, so be ready. (The flutter bait is also very good if you have a downrigger, as you can set the depth and dispense with the heavy sinker on the trace.)
At certain times of the year kingfish feed on squid and argonauts, and fresh dead squid suspended beneath a float or balloon can attract a lot of attention. Catching the squid is half the battle though. The best way is with one of the multi-pronged squid jigs that look like a prawn. Once caught, the squid should be hooked through the top of the mantle with a short, strong, live-bait hook (again, the Black Magic GZ 9/0 is excellent). Fish this bait as you would with a live bait, allowing the kingie to run with the bait before striking.

When kingfish are schooling they will respond to a berley trail, but to really get them feeding it’s best to cube for them as you would when fishing for yellowfin tuna. This entails chopping up a heap of pilchard cubes and slowly feeding a cube over the side every couple of seconds. Then, if a kingfish comes into the cube trail, feed a cube loaded with a small, strong hook within it; using low visibility fluorocarbon leader can attract more strikes, as fish will be very wary of cubes that look unnatural. This also means stripping line from your reel so the bait cube sinks more freely; strike as soon as the line races away or you see a fish eat the cube.

At times kingfish will hunt and feed on the bottom instead of mid-water or at the surface. Generally this is in murky harbours or places where the kingfish are feeding on prey such as flounder. In these situations kingies will take bottom baits happily. Using any of the baits already mentioned, pin them on a bottom-fishing rig made up from a Break Out Sinker and a metre of 40-50kg trace.

Because the techniques for bait fishing for inshore kingfish are suitable for both boat-based and land-based anglers, tackle selection needs to be based on the particular circumstances. Things such as line weight, rod length and the like should be suited to personal requirements. I favour heavier tackle to minimise lost fish and make it easier to release undersized or unwanted fish. The legal size for kingfish is 75cm, which is actually quite a decent-sized fish. It can be quite hard to measure a fish like this, as they are very strong, and they may injure themselves flapping about, so unless sure it is of legal size, you should get it back in the water and released with the minimum of handling.

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