Take a topwater approach for the most fun a reef donkey can offer.
Capt. Jot Owens checked the wind before ever setting foot on the dock. All the flags were hanging limp, and the lines extending up the aluminum masts of sailboats were silenced of their nearly incessant summertime clanging. The weather report was for more of the same, calm winds and slight seas.
“Time to tackle an amberjack,” he said. “If you want to amp up your fun, you’ve got to catch an A.J. on a topwater plug.”
Owens cranked the outboard and steered his 22-foot Ranger bay boat from its home at Seapath Marine in Wrightsville Beach, along the Intracoastal Waterway (ICW) out into the open Atlantic through Masonboro Inlet.
As the last inlet roller lapped the stern, a slick-calm ocean stretched emerald green in front of the boat. About three miles later, he passed AR 370, the Meares Harris Reef — without slowing down.
“The tug and liberty ship at AR 370 are great places to catch amberjack,” he said, “but it’s the weekend … and a couple hundred boats are on the nearshore reef,” Owens said. “So, we’re heading farther offshore. You need lots of room to play an Amberjack, or you’ll be tangling your line in someone’s anchor line. We’re heading out to one of the other reefs, maybe the 5-Mile Boxcars or 10-Mile Boxcars or even the Dredge Wreck. But almost any of the reefs will hold some amberjack. All it takes is hot water to turn them on.”
No boats were in sight at the next reef, which didn’t surprise him. Owens said news that amberjacks have colonized a particular reef will keep most fishermen away.
“A king mackerel fishermen or bottom-fish angler doesn’t want anything to do with an amberjack,” he said. “They wreck tackle, eat carefully-tended live baits, break fishing lines and eat up fishing time if you’re after other species. Not many people want to tangle with an A.J., but once you catch one on top, you’re hooked. It’s the biggest topwater strike in nearshore fishing.”
Owens pulled out a 7-foot Penn Torque Series jigging rod rated for 20- to 50-pound class line — an outfit designed specifically for using braided line, with a medium-heavy action perfect for popping big surface lures. His Penn 560L Liveliner reel held 350 yards of 40-pound Spiderwire Ultracast braid, with a 12-inch leader of 80-pound mono attached using an Albright knot.
“You really want to be able to pop that big plug hard,” he said. “That means you need a rod more designed for jigging than for casting. The heavier rod also helps keep the fish away from structure during the fight. You can’t send a boy to do a man’s job. An amberjack is one of the ocean’s toughest fighters, on par with a big yellowfin tuna. The difference is, when you hook an A.J., he’s right on top of the structure. Tuna are free swimmers. They won’t hang you up like an amberjack can.”
Owens had a Sabiki rig tied on another outfit to catch sardines and cigar minnows for live bait and chum. The rig with multiple feather jigs didn’t fail him, hooking a few baitfish each time he dropped it toward the reef.
“You can see fish and baitfish on the depthfinder,” Owens said. “That’s the key to finding amberjack on the reef. If the bait’s here, the amberjack are here. The trouble is, there are always other fish here, so you have to sort through them. The other problem is, the amberjack move around, so you never know exactly which piece of structure they are on until you give it a try.”
A barracuda destroyed one of the first Sabiki rigs Owens dropped down, shearing off with the rig and a trio of baitfish.
“When you come, bring lots of Sabiki rigs,” he said. “Kings, Spanish mackerel, barracuda, and amberjack are all going to eat the baits struggling on a Sabiki rig.”
As he brought another Sabiki rig to the surface, a geyser of water soaked Owens. The bottom hook and terminal sinker were gone.
“Looks like we just chummed up an amberjack,” he said. “He followed it all the way in.”
Owens picked up his big rod, rigged with a 6-inch Matzuo floating surface popper. Lobbing it toward the area where the fish had come from, he reeled in the slack. Once the mouth of the lure was pointing toward the rod tip, he worked the rod hard, alternating between reeling fast and popping the tip. The lure was making a huge commotion.
“First, reel out all the slack, then keep the rod tip low,” he said. “After that, you just keep yanking it. If the fish misses the hooks on the first strike, he usually loses interest.”
A big amberjack struck and missed. On a subsequent cast, the fish made a half-hearted boil at the lure. After that, no matter what Owens did, whether he made a cast and kept popping the popper all the way back to the boat, or let it sit a few seconds between pops, the fish would not strike it again.
“If you don’t find any takers in one spot, you have to move to another part of the reef,” he said. “They’re either going to bite right away or not at all. That’s the good thing about fishing with a popper. You’re going to see active fish if they are there. If I don’t get a bite within one hour of fishing around a particular reef, I head for another one.”
Owens found another spot with fish marked on the depthfinder, walked to his livewell and netted a trio of sardines. He threw them alive and wriggling into the water, rather than banging them off the boat or motor.
“I’ve found amberjack are attracted to live baits, even if they were uninjured,” he said. “Live chum turns them on when nothing else seems to work.”
Huge swirls behind the boat provided confirmation. Owens cast the popper into the swirls and popped it one time. An amberjack grabbed the lure and headed for the structure, making an enormous splash and ripping the line away against 20 pounds of drag.
Owens throttled the motor into a forward idle, turning the wheel away from the structure with one hand while keeping the line taut with the other. The amberjack dug for the boxcars on the bottom.
“You can’t really overpower a big amberjack’s initial runs,” Owens said. “If you try to stop him with the drag, he’ll break the leader or line. What you’re doing is fooling him by heading away slowly as he pulls some line against the drag. Once he realizes that he’s hooked and being pulled away from his sanctuary, the fight really begins.”
When the boat was about 100 yards from the reef buoy, the fish made a desperate lunge back toward it. Owens kept the line tight, using his fingers against the spool rim to apply additional pressure to the drag setting.
“You’re using more drag than you do while fighting a bluefin tuna,” he said. “It’s an endurance game. You have to make him give up before you do. The average amberjack weighs 20 to 45 pounds, but if you hook a 90-pounder, landing him will take an hour or longer.”
Owens made fairly quick work of a small A.J., a fish he estimated at 35 pounds, in about 15 minutes. It made several surging runs before he corralled its head in a rubber landing net and swung it aboard. He unhooked the fish and revived it by pumping it forward and backward in the water before it swam away on its own.
“Amberjack are good to eat,” he said. “I might keep a smaller one on occasion, but usually, I let them go. Some of the larger fish have a lot of parasitic worms in their meat. In a typical day with two anglers, we will land six or eight fish, which is enough big-fish fun for anyone.”
Another angler who runs into more amberjack than he actually cares to is Capt. Dennis Barbour, who owns Carolina Beach’s Island Tackle and operates Silverado Charters.
“We usually hook them when we’re trolling for king mackerel, and that’s always bad,” Barbour said. “With 20-pound trolling gear, all you’re going to reel in is a frayed line if he gets down to the bottom. If you want to specifically target amberjack, one of the most fun ways of doing it is with a topwater plug. Tsunami makes some inexpensive poppers that really do the trick.”
Barbour said the Dredge Wreck is a close-in hotspot from Carolina Beach Inlet. But Christmas Rock, at 24 miles, is a great place, as well as the 30/30 Ledge where he says the structure runs for two miles.
“You can catch so many amberjack along the 30/30 you can’t fish for anything else,” he said. “I’m glad there is an increasing interest in catching amberjack, because they are top sport fish. Everyone wants to catch a big fish that gives a big pull. They’re willing biters and easy to find. All it takes is a calm day for using topwater poppers and you can have as much amberjack action as you’re physically capable of handling.”
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