Terry Lacoss

SKA Captains Joe Bruce and Ed Mecchella have a solid game plan that helps their kingfish team double up on their kingfish success!

You might say that Captain Joe Bruce has enjoyed double success during the many Southern Kingfish Association tournament seasons. Joe Bruce captained his kingfish team, Angling Pursuits, to Angler of the Year during the 1992 SKA tournament fishing season. Bruce also fished with Paul Massey’s Outrageous kingfish team and when the skilled kingfish team captured SKA Angler of the Year honors in 2003. While winning the coveted SKA Angler of the Year award is the goal of any competitive kingfish team, winning the title twice is certainly double the difficulty.

Another SKA kingfish team that has enjoyed double success on the tournament trail, is Ed Mecchella’s Fish Fever kingfish team. During the 2002 Southern Kingfish Association tournament season, Ed Mecchella captained his fishing team not only to the Angler of the Year title, but also captured the 2002 SKA National Championship while fishing from Biloxi, Mississippi. This accomplishment is certainly doubly difficult.

However when you take a closer look at both of these accomplished SKA kingfish captains, they have a lot in common. Both Bruce and Mecchella double up on both their baitfish size and fishing efforts while becoming winners on the SKA tournament kingfish trail.

“During the first day of the 2008 SKA National Championship, we checked our boat out and found winds were literally “howling” from the Northeast at 40 miles per hour,”Shawn Mecchella said. “Seas were running from eight to ten feet, making it extremely difficult to run any long distances to where we hoped to catch our king mackerel. I was fishing with my father and decided to call it a day and headed back to the tournament site.”

SKA tournament rules for the National Championship include that Small Craft Warnings may not cancel the tournament. However considering the bad weather during the first day of competition, tournament teams were allowed to weigh in two fish during the final day of the event. This would give teams a chance to weigh in one kingfish during the first day of competition and one fish during the final day of the event. However if they did not fish on the first day, or weigh in a kingfish, they had the opportunity to weigh in two fish during the final day of the two-day tournament.

“After checking out on the final day of the tournament, the seas were finally laying down to six to eight feet,”Shawn Mecchella said. “Tucking in behind the Chandelier Islands, we ran an extra 20 miles, which allowed for some protection from the rough seas. After reaching the “City Rigs” we spent an extra 45 minutes while using jigs and sabiki rigs to capture four-dozen blue runners and a four-pound bluefish that eventually proved to be our ace in the hole.”

While many of the SKA kingfish teams had quickly jigged up a livewell full of blue runners and left, the Fish Fever kingfish team spent that extra time to catch the right bait.

“We knew that there were plenty of kingfish where we had found fish during practice,”Shawn said. “However our main goal was to win the tournament and we knew first hand that average size live baits were not the key to catching tournament winning king mackerel. That’s why we spent the extra time in capturing larger baits.”

Obviously Ed and son, Shawn, knew first hand that their main objective was to take the time and patience in catching bigger baits.

After reaching a rocky bottom area, which was some 80 miles from the SKA tournament site, the Mecchellas began free-lining their live baits back into a giant school of Gulf king mackerel.

“There were several other SKA kingfish teams fishing the same area and were constantly hooked up to king mackerel,”Shawn said. “However our winning key was in using the larger baits so that the smaller kingfish would allow them to feed back to the larger kingfish. Smaller live baits would be quickly eaten up by the smaller kingfish, giving us little chance in barbing a big tournament winning kingfish.”

“That’s when that big four-pound live bluefish became our ace in the hole. After free lining that big bluefish past that school of smaller kingfish, a much larger kingfish was waiting to eat our bluefish. It was a pretty uneventful fight as we had the drags set pretty tight. We had the fish in the boat after a five-minute fight.”

Paired with a 38.52-pound king mackerel that they had boated earlier, the 57.63-pound smoker landed team Fish Fever the 2008 SKA National Championship!

Not only did team Fish Fever double up on their live bait size, but they also doubled up on their SKA National Championships by capturing both the 2002 and 2008 SKA National Championships!

Captain Joe Bruce also knows how to double up on his Southern Kingfish Association tournament success. Joe Bruce not only won top honors during the 1992 SKA tournament season by winning Angler of the Year honors, but also fished with Paul Massey when team Outrageous won the Angler of the Year title during the 2003 SKA tournament season.

Joe Bruce’s SKA kingfish success began during the first day of the 1992 Golden Isles Kingfish Tournament.

“We were slow trolling live menhaden just north of the St. Mary’s shipping channel,” Bruce remembers. “I was fishing with long time friend and business acquaintance, Buddy Hutchinson. We both hoped our key to winning the event was to troll a pair of big menhaden off the port side and midway back in our live bait trolling spread. The pair of large menhaden were rigged up in “double pogy” fashion, which we had been very successful in the past in catching big king mackerel. This was also the same side of the boat that we also planned to double up on our chumming efforts.”

Captain Joe Bruce employs an electric meat grinder, rigged to a rod holder mount on the port side of his tournament boat, Angling Pursuits.

“Here I have cut the bottom off from a one gallon milk jug, which I hold under the mouth of the meat grinder while grinding up menhaden, Bruce said. “Once the gallon jug is full of ground chum, I will begin to slosh the ground chum into our live bait trolling spread. Which by the way, we typically chum very heavy with both ground chum, and dog food pellets soaked with menhaden oil. The menhaden soaked dog pellets are placed in a mesh bag and attached to a gunnel cleat.”

“We were fortunate to hook up to a fairly big kingfish early that morning, with Buddy fighting the big king off the bow and me running the boat. That big fish soon rolled up right in front of Buddy at the bow.”

“Joe, it’s a big tarpon”, Buddy said!

“That’s no tarpon,”Bruce said. “That’s the winning kingfish”!

Angling Pursuits went on to win the event with a 53.15-pound king mackerel, which is still the tournament record for the annual SKA Golden Isles Kingfish Tournament.

Not only did Joe Bruce double up on the size of his kingfish baits, but he also doubled up on his chumming efforts as well. Captain Joe Bruce has won numerous awards during the many years while competing in the SKA tournament trail, including being inducted into the SKA Hall of Fame in 2007.

“By far the most satisfying accomplishment that I have enjoyed while competitively fishing the SKA tournament trail since 1992, is being inducted into the SKA Hall of Fame, Bruce said.

Today, Bruce competes from a 23-foot World Cat, powered by twin 150-HP Mercury outboards. Mecchella competes from a 31-foot Yellowfin, powered by 300-HP Yamaha outboards. Both SKA kingfish teams have two things in common, they double up on their kingfish baits, which has given them double success on the SKA tournament trail!