Fins flexed, gold accents glistening, a yellowfin tuna makes a grand entrance into the cockpit.

The flotilla to our south meant one thing: the migratory kingfish had arrived. On the heels of a two-month northeast blow, the razor-toothed crowd-pleasers were on their traditional wintering grounds off Miami. The fleet was out in force, doubtless due to the combination of calm weather and the flurry of encouraging radio and newspaper reports. Most boats were catching early season snakes in the 5-pound range, but some had fish well into the 20s. The size would increase through the New Year, likely culminating in 30- and 40-pound smokers by April.

It looked like loads of fun, but we had other plans.

My wife wanted sailfish, and the modest livewell on our 17-foot boat was temporarily out of service. We hadn't the time nor the bait to cull through the kingfish frenzy on the inshore reef. We were after the big bite.

On the ride south from our home port of Haulover Inlet, we'd stopped at a yellow buoy in 29 feet of water north of Government Cut. The buoy can be a dependable spot for catching blue runners, which I have found to be tops among the bait species that can thrive in a tank fed manually by 5-gallon-bucket circulation. A few drops of a No. 4 Hayabusa sabiki rig had us eight palm-size runners, plus one huge cigar minnow. We made it a jack-family triad by adding a token goggle-eye from a range marker south of the Cut.

It was when we zoomed past the red-and-white sea buoy in 120 feet of water that I began to question our plan. Boats were solid on the Cuban Hole, a kingfish hotspot in 80 feet south of the shipping channel. I flashed back to a day last year when Capt. Dave Kostyo, John Garcia and I limited (two apiece) on 15-pounders in 30 minutes. The action bordered on silliness. Our first fish leaped 10 feet out of the water twice before smashing a bait not 20 feet from our stern. A full-scale riot followed, with anglers scurrying around Kostyo's 28-foot Knot Nancy like square dancers overdosed on caffeine. We released kings one after the other, some into the icebox, some back into the school. Massacred that day was an uncountable number of threadfin herring, silvery baits which had taken us hours to procure on patches of hard bottom off Miami Beach.

Tiffany looked at me with a blank expression as I recalled our feats. She then wrinkled her nose and summarized her opinion of the species' debatable table quality.

"No kingfish."

Not even kingfish salad? I thought to myself.

We've been through this before was the telepathic message I received. On we went.

A half-mile north of the sea buoy we located the makings of a decent weedline in 185 feet of water. Another boat was poking around upcurrent of us. I hooked a runner sideways through the nose with a 4/0 Owner circle hook and cast it behind our boat. I did the same with our goggle-eye--the most prized of our sailfish baits. Unfortunately for us--not to mention the baitfish--our gog was instantly devoured by a small shark that raced out from beneath a patch of weeds.

I cut loose the interloper at boatside, noting the neat hookup in the corner of its mouth. Our 50-pound monofilament leader was virtually untouched. I have also heard of big kings being caught on circle hooks and straight mono. Supposedly, the theory behind this type of hook is that it slides around in the mouth and catches in the corner of the jaw when the fish turns away. How the leader manages to avoid abrasion from knife-like teeth is beyond me, but it happens pretty often.

I tied on a new hook, rebaited with a blue runner and we continued fishing. For a time, I slow-trolled south toward the sea buoy, keeping our hyperactive baits following in an orderly fashion. Sensing a slight pickup in the northbound current, I cut the engine and allowed us to drift in pleasant silence. We stayed on the green side of the edge. A trip to Islamorada a few days before had revealed more action in the dirty water; I suspected the same would hold here in my home waters off Miami.

Due in part to the tidal flux of inshore water, it's common to find a debris-peppered green-to-blue color change off Miami's sea buoy. On days when the Gulf Stream moves in tight to shore, the change may be especially dramatic. "The area right around the sea buoy can be great for sailfishing, especially when the incoming tide brings in the clear blue water," said Capt. Jimbo Thomas, skipper of the Thomas Flyer. "We've had sails come right up to the boat while we were catching bait at the buoy." Thomas' distinctive yellow charterboat is a familiar sight around the buoy early in the morning, when he and brother Rick are loading the baitwell with speedos or tinker mackerel, using larger-size sabiki rigs.

Sails, kings, dolphin, sometimes even cobia--all seem to converge at the intersection of oceanic and inshore water within a short boat ride of the sea buoy. One sure reason is that the movement of water through the Cut carries with it a great deal of forage, a gigantic chumline, if you will. Shrimp, pilchards, herrings and various other marine creatures flush out of Biscayne Bay, and predators lie in wait. A change in tide can really light up the fishing. On a day last summer, friend Scott Scargle and I drifted pilchards within casting distance of the sea buoy for a solid hour without a hookup. Then, as the current began flowing seaward, we started losing our rigs--egg sinker, swivel, leader and all. Just a thump and that was it; clean cutoff every time. We even tried rigging our sinkers breakaway-style, with a section of leader doubled over and pushed through the sinker, held temporarily in place with a rubber band. No help. The kings would bite the sinker before the bait. The only way to land a fish was to pin a pilchard to a 1/2-ounce jig protected by a foot of No. 4 wire. When we exhausted our supply of bait (which had taken us quite some time to catch on spoil island grassflats in the bay) we started catching schoolie kings on plain white jigs. In the heavy current that day I saw something that you usually only expect to see in a chumline--kings swimming right on top in 140 feet of water, flashing beneath the waves.

Today, I didn't see much of anything when our first sailfish struck. Just a pop of the rodtip. Tiffany was cat-napping in the bow, and so I grabbed the spinner, freespooled line, and then flipped the bail and cranked tight to...dead weight. I figured it was another shark--or a patch of weed.

"Nothing much," I muttered. "You want this fish?"

"No, no, it's yours," said my partner, apparently more interested in catching some sun than tugging on a shark.

Just then a bill poked through the surface, followed in slow motion by a silver-and-blue head that glistened in the morning sunlight. The fish shook a pearlescent necklace of water droplets, then kicked its tail and jumped clear out of the water for us to see.

"A sail!" I shouted.

The fish, evidently, had been catching some rays of its own when it decided to bite the sharp morsel. Enraged at the dupe, the lazy sail soon woke up and launched into classic form, bounding toward Bimini with a hundred yards of 15-pound, hi-vis green mono in tow.

It was a big, determined fish, and it conserved its energy by doing more fighting below the surface than above. After a half-hour of up-and-down and round-and-round, I passed the rod to Tiffany, grabbed the leader and pulled the fish the last few feet to boatside. The little hook--an Eagle Claw L194, not a circle--was embedded just inside the mouth. The fish still had a lot of juice in it, so rather than dig for the hook, I snipped the leader close to the hookeye and freed the fish.

"You ready to start fishing yet?" I asked.

She smiled.