Taylor-Made Spanish

Two Swansboro captains discover a nearshore area with big kings and Spanish mackerels.

It was a warm summer morning with no wind and high humidity, typical of the weather along the North Carolina coast in June. The day was perfect except for one thing.“The only thing bad about fishing this time of year is the sand gnats,” Capt. Mike Taylor said. “They will eat you alive early and late in the day if the wind isn’t blowing.”

Taylor loaded his fishing gear into his 24-foot Pathfinder boat, getting gnat-bit all the while.

He already had filled his live well with a supply of menhaden. Using a cast net, he caught the silvery baitfish near the boat docks where he picks up clients at Dudley’s Marina is Swansboro. Dudley’s has complete facilities for fishing and boating, including wet slips, fish-cleaning facilities, frozen and live baits.

The breeze generated by the ride south along the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway dispelled the swarming gnats. The journey to the Atlantic Ocean through Bogue Inlet was pleasant until the boat hit the last series of swells. Even the 24-foot boat had to go slowly to ride over cresting waves.

“We’re lucky to be able to get out at all,” Taylor said. “They just completed the new dredging project and replaced the channel-marker buoys. The channel is already shifting back near the beach.”

Bogue, like the state’s other shallow-draft inlets, is likely to receive no federal funding for maintenance in the future. If local funding doesn’t fill the void, Bogue Inlet will close or likely shoal to the point of unsafe navigation. The swells near the shelf of the new inlet where it met the ocean were a small price to pay for being able to heading out to the nearshore ledges offshore of Bogue Banks for a day of mackerel fishing.

Once the last swell was successfully surfed, the ride to the ledges was swift. The day was overcast with occasional rain showers, intermittent enough to keep Taylor guessing whether to break out the rain gear.

“Rain gear can make you sweat as much as you’d get wet from the rain,” Taylor said. “Unless it’s a hard, cold rain, it doesn’t pay to pull on the rain gear.”

Taylor was strictly a commercial fisherman until a couple of years ago. But with increasingly stringent regulations, that occupation was producing diminishing returns. That fact, along with the urging of one his best friends and also one of Swansboro’s top fishing guides, Capt. Jeff Cronk of Fish’n 4 Life Charters, compelled Taylor to enter the charter business. He started business as Taylor-Made Charters, and he’s never regretted the move.

“I just enjoy fishing,” he said. “All my life, I was a commercial fisherman. I’ve fished the waters from Morehead City to Topsail Beach, and so I already know where the fishing is hot. It was an easy transition from commercial fishing to charter fishing, and it’s a whole lot of fun taking people to places I know have lots of fish.”

Taylor had been weaving tales of the excellent bite of king mackerel and Spanish mackerel at the hard-bottom areas offshore of Bogue Banks. He was within sight of Bogue Pier when he throttled the motor down to an idle.

“These ledges are really close to shore and are usually the best,” he said. “I fish Keypost, Inshore Keypost, Station Rock and any other series of ledges. Some have names and some don’t.

“(Cronk) originally found the flounder out here a couple of years ago. He figured if we could catch summer flounder at these ledges like they do farther south, the big Spanish mackerel they catch on those ledges off Wrightsville Beach and Southport also would be here. What we found was not only huge, citation-size Spanish mackerel, but also big king mackerel. Many of the king mackerels are big enough to earn citations.

To earn an award from the N.C. Division of Marine Fisheries Salt Water Tournament, a Spanish mackerel must weigh 6 pounds and a king mackerel must weigh 30 pounds if retained or be 50 inches long if released. Those are some mighty big fish by any angler’s standards. But catching fish that size using light tackle can add another dimension to the thrill of hooking them.

Taylor didn’t have a conventional trolling outfit. All his rods were spinning outfits, not much bigger than most anglers use for catching speckled trout, red drum and flounder. Indeed, multiple-species use is the driving force behind Taylor’s gear choices.

“The superbraid lines have revolutionized light-tackle fishing,” he said. “Instead of using a 3/0- to 5/0-size conventional reel, spooled with 350 yards or more of monofilament, I can put the same amount of superbraid line on a Penn 5500 series reel. It’s more expensive than mono, but you don’t have to change it nearly as often.

“I use 14-pound-test Berkley Fireline instead of a woven braid. It‘s a twisted Spectra fiber line, so it has an advantage none of the other lines do when you’re fishing with spinning gear.

“I set the drags very light, somewhere between 2 and 4 pounds. If I get a customer who’s not used to fishing with such light drags, he keeps reeling while the fish is taking line. That would twist mono or woven braid lines so bad they’d knot up. But since the Fireline is a twisted line, it just twists tighter or untwists. It doesn’t have any memory, so it stays limp and stacks easily on the spool.

“I use medium to light-action rods, and I can use the same rods for flounder right here on these same ledges or head inshore for catching speckled trout or red drum. The superbraid also is more durable against nicks from fishes’ teeth, or if a customer lets it hit the motor or the side of the boat while he’s playing a fish. Mono might cut or break under those conditions, but Fireline won’t.”

Taylor watched his depth-finder screen and GPS unit, making sure he was at one of his favorite ledges. Lots of baitfish showed on the bottom, and bold bottom marks designated rock and coral. In the water column, marks showed baitfish schools that appeared and disappeared as he rode above them.

All the while, he watched the sky for sea birds and the surface of the water for signs of feeding mackerel. Individual birds circled high and wide, then one would dive toward the water. Other birds soon joined the solo diver.

“The fish are a little bit below the surface, where the birds can’t get to the baitfish,” he said. “But at least they’re telling us there are fish near the top.”

Taylor used a dip net to catch a menhaden from the live well. Instead of the 12-inch, speckled-sided pogey most anglers use for king mackerel trolling, he nabbed a small menhaden no more than 6-inches long.

“This is a good-size bait for Spanish mackerel and flounder, and a big king mackerel certainly won’t turn it down,” Taylor said. “If you were tournament fishing for kings, you’d want bigger baits. But out here, we want a multiple-purpose bait, so we use the smaller menhaden.”

Taylor used the same style of live-bait rig most king mackerel anglers use for slow trolling, except it was adjusted to the size of the baitfish. A leader of No. 5 coffee-colored wire was attached to the line by a swivel. A pair of No. 4 treble hooks joined in tandem by a 4-inch length of No. 3 brown wire was tied to the leader. All connections were made with standard haywire twists and barrel wraps.

“I use the smallest wire I can,” Taylor said. “The clearer the water, the more likely the fish are to see it. It’s amazing how a fish can strike a bait and miss the hook. They have to be able to see it or sense it.”

Taylor set out only two lines while he circled above the ledges, making increasingly larger loops. He wanted to draw that first strike to be sure game fish were in the area.

“I’m sure they’re somewhere at these ledges,” he said. “Once they get here, they stay for a couple of months. But the biggest Spanish mackerel arrive earliest. I think live bait is the key to continuing to catch them once the smaller fish show up. If you troll with spoons, you are going to catch lots of little ones. But the citation Spanish are going to be caught with live baits.”

One of the reels sang out. But by the time Taylor could lift it from the transom rod holder, the fish was gone. Reeling in the line revealed a baitfish that was cut and bleeding from the strike of a set of razor-sharp teeth.

“Probably a Spanish, by the size of the teeth marks,” he said. “But it could have been a small king.”

Re-baiting the rig, he flipped the spinning reel bail and let out line. He fished within 40 feet of the boat. The other lines were 50 to 80 feet behind the boat.

“You want to space your lines apart,” he said. “Mackerel are fast-swimming fish and cover a lot of water. If you were fishing four rods, you’d want to space them farther apart to cover as much water as you can to increase the odds of running one of your baits over a fish.”

Cronk and Taylor were the only boaters at the ledges sampling their newly-discovered fishery. Soon they were sharing reports of bird and baitfish sightings, along with missed and landed fish.

Taylor saw a baitfish school and used his cast net to see what the fish were eating. The net came back full of Atlantic threadfin herring, a small baitfish that reaches a length of 4 to 6 inches. He added them to his live well and to his live-bait rigs.

“If you use what they’re eating, you should catch more fish,” he said.

Once he found the concentration of fish, strikes became consistent. While the initial trolling had been rather boring, once Taylor and Cronk found the fish, the action was consistent. None of the fish were small, with each Spanish mackerel ripping off at least 100 yards of line during its initial run. None of the Spanish landed weighed less than 5 pounds.

Taylor used a net to land the Spanish he wanted to keep. Some of the fish he wanted to release were landed with the tail-grab method.

Once the fish were under control, he used pliers to pull the hooks from their mouths and heads. One thing about a treble-hook live-bait rig is anglers never know where the hook-set will occur. One foul-hooked Spanish mackerel was so frisky it fought like a much larger king mackerel.

Two of the Spanish mackerel Taylor caught weighed more than 6 pounds, with one of them nearly 7 pounds when weighed later at the certified scales at Dudley’s. The biggest king mackerel he caught weighed nearly 20 pounds.

But Cronk claimed big fish of the day with a king mackerel he estimated weighed more than the citation weight of 30 pounds. The client who caught the big king held it up for Taylor to admire.

“Anybody can catch fish like this,” Taylor said. “But the thrill of doing it with light tackle adds to the experience.

“When you hook a big fish with light tackle, he runs off more line faster, takes longer to catch, and you know there’s a chance he might get away. With superbraid line, you can feel it every time he shakes his head or hits the line with his tail.

“There’s excitement in every second of the fight.”