Terry Lacoss

Kingfish crave certain baitfish like candy, producing a rash of tournament breaking kingfish and paydays too!

It's no secret, find concentrations of big baits and your chances of winning a Southern Kingfish Association king mackerel tournament have just doubled. Troll with these same jumbo live baits and your kingfish team's chances of winning have just tripled!

Kept a secret for many kingfish seasons now, the majority of winning SKA teams has been focusing their efforts on finding concentrations of big live-bait schools, then simply fishing close to the dense pods.

One such fishing team that has been red-hot during the month of June and has already won four major SKA kingfish events while live bait trolling close to big schools of large baitfish. The Jacksonville Florida based fishing team Southbound, captained by Lon Bryan IV and including fellow teammates Andy Miska, Tyler Eichhholz and Thomas Cowan, began their four tournament winning streak by winning Georgia's Sapelo SKA event with a 34-pound kingfish. They followed it up by winning St. Augustine Florida's Kingbuster king mackerel tournament by weighing in a 44-pound king mackerel. Then the skilled Jacksonville kingfish team broke all tournament records by weighing in a 53.20-pound kingfish in route to winning the 24th Annual Nassau Sport Fishing Association's Tournament of Champions! Finally, Bryan and crew landed a 36-pounder to win their second Georgia tournament in Brunswick at the Two Way event.

"We conduct most of our tournament fishing efforts in areas where there are excellent concentrations of big live baits," Thomas Cowan said. "Many of these areas include large blue runners or Spanish mackerel. For example, we thought our chances of catching a tournament-winning kingfish during all of these recent events were dependent upon the lack of large concentrations of Spanish mackerel in close to the beaches. However, offshore there were areas where there were nice concentrations of big blue runners. This is where we focused our fishing efforts for tournament winning kingfish and it paid off big!"

The Southbound's winning kingfish theory includes basic fishing knowledge, but has been overlooked by the majority of SKA king mackerel teams until recent kingfish tournament seasons.

"Big king mackerel grow big for one reason, by eating a lot of big baitfish including Spanish mackerel and blue runners," Thomas Cowan said. "It takes a lot of small pogies and cigar minnows to produce a 40-pound plus king mackerel. Kingfish grow very fast when eating Spanish mackerel and blue runners."

"There is, however, one live bait that kingfish eat like candy and that's goggleyes. Goggleyes are a very shinny baitfish and have very few spines. Kingfish eat them without having to worry much about their sharp spines. We normally purchase our goggleyes from Eric Wettermann of Mr. Sportsman Live Bait Co. Eric jigs the goggleyes up from a south Florida deep water reef at night and delivers then to the boat ramp the following morning."

Wettermann sells both goggleyes and blue runners to mainly kingfish tournament teams from his live tank truck. The price has been around $120.00 per dozen.
One problem that surfaces with these expensive live kingfish baits, is simply keeping them alive in your boat's livewell.

During the recently held Georgia's St. Mary's kingfish tournament, my son, Terry David Lacoss secured a couple of dozen goggleyes from Eric Wettermann and headed offshore. The weather soon turned bad with signs of an approaching thunderstorm.

"I was free lining a live goggleye back into the live bait trolling spread when I saw a huge wahoo engulf the live bait only 15 feet off from the transom," Captain T. D. Lacoss said. "We fought that wahoo for nearly two hours when the tiring wahoo came up close to the boat and our kingfish gaff. Suddenly, out of nowhere a 14-foot hammerhead struck the tail of the wahoo and at the same time I gaffed the horse size 'Hoo'."

The Wahoo weighed 93-pounds!

However after catching the big wahoo, T.D. opened the livewell lid and found all of the goggleyes had died. Unfortunately he had made the mistake of mixing the goggleyes in the livewell with other species of live baits.

"We keep our goggleyes separate and in their own live bait well", Thomas Cowan explained. "We often purchase a couple dozen live baits, including a dozen blue runners and a dozen goggleyes. Each dozen are kept in their own separate livewell. I really believe that once a live bait begins to tire and is close to expiring in the livewell, it begins affecting all of the remaining live baits. If the dying bait, or baits, are not removed, all of the remaining baitfish may soon die! With this in mind, we are constantly watching our live baits and disposing any of the baits that begin to tire or weaken."

"We also don't add any chemicals to our livewell, we just keep pumping in fresh water and circulating the water in the livewell. It seems to work for us, and more importantly, it keeps our expensive live baits alive."

Team Southbound does beef up their terminal kingfish tackle when live bait trolling for tournament size king mackerel. Particularly when trolling two-pound blue runners. The standard two pounds of drag is increased to two to three pounds on the reel's drag setting when the live baits are set out in a live bait trolling pattern. A size 1/0 VMC live bait hook is used as a nose hook and two #2-4X VMC treble hooks are rigged in stinger fashion. Team Southbound also uses standard 20-pound kingfish tackle with a three-foot section of 20-pound fluorocarbon monofilament line as leader. Standard number three coffee stained malin wire is used for a shock leader and number four coffee stained malin wire leader is used as stinger wire.

The Jacksonville, Florida Southbound fishing team certainly has a winning kingfish pattern working for their Southern Kingfish Association tournament team. After two SKA Division 5 events have already been played out, Captain Lon Bryan IV and his skilled kingfish team have already amassed 97.20-pounds after weighing two tournament king mackerel. Bryan's team is certainly setting a record breaking season by winning three events in less than 30 days, breaking the Nassau Sport fishing Association Tournament of Champions tournament record and possibly breaking the three-fish aggregate weight for Florida's SKA Division 5.

Goggleyes have been growing in popularity among East Coast SKA tournament kingfish teams during the past five years. Some five kingfish Championships ago, the That's My Dog SKA fishing team won the National Championship while live bait trolling with live goggleyes, which really opened up many eyes to the effectiveness of those shinny, soft and almost spine-free "Candy" baits.

It has also been standard practice for Gulf Coast SKA tournament teams for several kingfish seasons now to troll with two- to three-pound blue runners.

There are a lot of candy baits in the ocean that king mackerel simply have a sweet tooth for. Goggleyes and blue runners may head up the list, but king mackerel fishermen must consider other live baits too, including ribbonfish, "Turbo" pogies, Spanish sardines, large greenies, bluefish, whiting, yellowmouth trout, Spanish mackerel and more.

All of these baits can be extremely effective when king mackerel are feeding on them and on a regular basis.

For more information on Mr. Sportsman's live bait service, call (561) 758-3947.