As summer approaches, mackerel flock to the Frying Pan Tower area.
The boat passed the Cape Fear knuckle buoy as the sun started to rise, and dawn’s early light confirmed what the crew on Capt. Tommy Rickman’s center-console Parker had suspected all along: the weatherman had been correct! The wind had blown well above 20 knots the previous day, and it had the ocean all stirred up, but the NOAA marine weather forecast was unwavering: the wind would fall out overnight, the wind-driven swell would subside, and it would be a nice day on the water.
Skipping lightly along the swells after leaving Southport, Rickman adjusted his course once he rounded the knuckle buoy and headed for Frying Pan Tower — where reports had surfaced of good catches of king mackerel the previous week.
When he reached the tower, Rickman, of Southport Angler Outfitters (866-395-FISH), eased the throttles back on the twin Yamaha outboards, pulled one into neutral as he switched it off and announced, “Well boys, we’re here. Let’s see if the fish are too.”
Rickman and Tommy Taylor set out a pair of drone spoons on long monofilament leaders behind large planers: one 105 feet back and the other 140. A sea witch with a false albacore belly strip, was deployed behind a trolling sinker off the leaning post.
“What we’re doing right now is trying to locate the fish,” Rickman said. “We can troll this setup at five to seven knots and cover some ground while we’re looking. Watch the fishfinder while we’re doing this; it’s also a great way to find ledges and such for bottom-fishing.
“Once we find a school of fish, we’ll switch to some live-bait outfits, but we’ll be using frozen cigar minnows instead of live baits,” he said. “We can only troll those about one to two knots, which doesn’t allow us to cover much area, so we need to be on the fish before we make that switch.”
The planers, Rickman explained, pulled the spoons down in the water column to where fish might be feeding. By varying the depths and having the sea witch just below the surface, it would be easier to locate the kings and the depths at which they are feeding.
P laners will dive about a foot for every three to four feet they’re trolled behind the boat. The planer closest to the boat would be about 30 feet deep, and the one farther back would be about 40 feet deep — just about right since the water depth varies from 50 to 65 feet around the tower.
It wasn’t long before the first king came calling. Taylor noticed the line to the deeper planer coming to the surface — the sign of a strike as the planer releases. Slipping on a pair of gloves, he began to hand-line the fish in. After a minute or two, a sliver shape appeared behind the boat.
“It’s a king,” Taylor said, excitement in his voice. “That’s the first one; I hope it isn’t just a straggler.”
Before he could remove the hook, the line to the shallow planer jerked sharply and began heading to the surface. The “Man overboard/Save waypoint” button on Rickman’s Furuno GPS/Fishfinder unit was pushed, and Rickman started to turn the boat in a wide circle.
“This may be the school of kings we’re looking for,” Rickman said, instructing his crew to get the first spoon back in the water, to keep an eye on the sea witch, and to check the fish finder for a pod of bait.
Taylor didn’t get a chance to put his spoon back out; as he dropped his king into the fish box, the third rod — the one pulling the sea witch, began bucking wildly. He stopped to reel in the king that was struggling at the other end.
“I believe they’re still here,” Rickman said, his grin widening. “This is within several hundred yards of where they were on my last trip out here, so they haven’t moved much. These early kings aren’t big, but they are almost always hungry, and if you find them, you can catch them. Let’s get the light stuff out and have some fun!”
Accentuating Rickman’s point, the fishfinder lit up as a school of baitfish almost completely covered it. Hand-lining in his king, Rickman snuck a quick look at the screen, and his smile grew even broader as he explained that trails above the baitfish were feeding kings.
“The light stuff” was Rickman’s live-bait outfits: 7-foot St. Croix Triumph medium-power, fast-action rods with Shimano Speedmaster IV reels and spooled with 20-pound Berkley Big Game.
Rickman’s bait rigs were made of roughly three feet of No. 4 single-strand wire to the nose hook and five inches of No. 5 single-strand wire back to the trailing hook. Both hooks were No. 4 Eagle Claw 774 trebles. Some rigs had dusters and skirts in various color and some didn’t.
Baits with pink skirts were slightly more effective, but every color worked. With rigs out on only four rods — three on the surface staggered between 30 and 90 feet behind the boat and one on a downrigger — multiple fish were hooked up at different times: quite a few doubles, several triples and one “quad” strike.
Despite having a few fish pull free, Rickman almost had a limit before the kings appeared to disappear. He reassured his party that the kinds were still there but had just moved, and he put the spoons back out, sped up and found them again, this time a little inshore of the tower. They weren’t quite as thick, but action continued to be great.
Other species are often part of the catch on tower trips, and the variety increases as the water warms. Dolphin are frequent visitors, along with false albacore. Cobia are caught occasionally, plus wahoo, amberjack, sharks, African pompano and more.
“I know it’s a long run to the tower, but the fish have been here this spring, and there is real good opportunity to catch other species,” Rickman said. “As the water continues to warm, catches like this can occasionally be found as close as the 15- and 18-Mile Rock area. The Horseshoe, which is a little more than half this far offshore, is also a favorite spot. Sometimes we actually catch more dolphin than kings at the Horseshoe. It’s just nice when they are here and biting, especially when they are biting like they are today.”
Be the first to comment