That’s the basic history,” yelled Chris over the roar of the engine. “Thanks to these restrictions, Gulf amberjacks are now coming back stronger in numbers than anyone has seen for 15 or 20 years! It started three years ago. Now we’ve got a fantastic AJ fishery close to shore that lasts six to seven months a year. No need to run offshore to the deepwater wrecks during that time. They’re right here in our own front yard. Every year they’re getting bigger. Finally, after three years we’re getting more keeper-size fish again. Last July on a downrigger I caught a 51-pounder. Best part is that they will hit jigs. Jigging the jacks, it’s an old story but we haven’t done it recently in the numbers we’re doing now!”

Once we were a ways off a bridge span in 100 feet of water, we anchored so we were in a good position to work the fish. Chris put out some menhaden oil chum and by the time the jiggers were down and doing their thing, one after the other—often all of us at the same time—fought arched rods that felt as though we were hooked to something more than a 15-pound amberjack. But then, I had forgotten just how hard those babies fight. These 15-pounders fought more like jet-propelled 30-pound groupers.

During a break in the action, Chris told me to look at the fishfinder. It was a solid smudge of amberjacks 30 feet down. Amidst the action, Chris switched to a long red-and-white propeller lure. He ripped it halfway in when an explosion took him and his bowed rod halfway over the side.

Ambers came in and were quickly released. Then Fowler yelped as something heavier than our usual fare took him and his rod low over the port side. When he couldn’t fight it in, it was a tossup of whether he’d fed a nice grouper or a cobia.

Long, back-breaking moments later we glimpsed the dark shape in the blue green depths. A cobia. As usual the catch went wild at boatside but eventually came over the gunwale. It was a nice 45- to 50-pounder, scattering our crew in these tight confines the way a runaway pile driver might.

After that action we used Chris’ plug casts to do the bait and switch with Jack and his fly rod. He had no sink-tip or full-sink line, hoping that the eager ambers would feed on top. Eventually, one grabbed the weighted Deceiver and barreled full bore back to the bridge span.

Jack fought him just long enough to lose him on a cutoff.

Re-rigging he tried it again. And again he set the hook into an amber he swore was larger than any we had been catching. This one again showed him no mercy, plunging back down to the span and cutting him off.

We dropped the idea of the fly rod and went back to catching them by jig. Later, Parker told me that last November, Allan Sosnow of Fort Lauderdale booked him to fly-fish for AJs over the bridge spans. Chris took him to one that was in 70 feet of water. The top of the span was only 30 feet below them.

“We caught about 50 AJs in 4 hours,” he said. “All on fly rods.”

I contacted Sosnow to get the details. Here’s what he told me:

“To say that it was a great day fishing is an understatement. I landed over 20 AJs, Chris also caught many on the other fly rod. We even had several doubles. It wore this old body out but it was worth it.”

The night before Allan tied some poppers with green Edgewater 3⁄4-inch heads, silver Krystal flash and yellow bucktails. He also made some synthetic 5-inch bucktail Clousers: smoke over white and gray, and smoke over white, both on 1/0 and 2/0 Mustad 34007 shortshank hooks. And here, Sosnow did an important thing — something that probably made the difference—he put three extra lead eyes on each fly—“enough,” he said, “to get it down to over 30 feet.” Amazingly, he never got caught in the span. His leaders were 6 feet of 15-pound test on a 40-pound-test butt section on his 9-weight and 20-pound on his 10-weight. He used an intermediate line on both outfits.

Sosnow added that after four hours of back-breaking action with the AJs, “I faded out just as we were visited by a school of jacks in the 30- to 50-pound range. After this day’s fishing I had no interest in those bad guys at all.”

By the time the four of us had eight hours of catch and release with the AJs, some grouper, snapper and another 20-pound cobia that showed up, about the only way Jack or I wanted to see another amberjack at close range again was as a blackened fillet on a dinner plate. The one amber I caught that we kept nicely filled that picture for us all.

Here’s Parker’s tips on AJ action out of Panama City. Inshore amberjack action starts around the bottom structures about the time water temperature approaches 70 degrees. That means spring and fall action. “I start getting into good topwater action when the temperatures seem to be between 65 and 72 degrees,” said Parker. “Start looking for the fish anywhere from 6 miles out to 15 miles. If some of the bridge spans produce only 10-pound ambers, move to another span and you will probably start catching the keeper size. (Local tackle shops, as well as fishing charts, can provide the numbers for these bridge spans and other artificial reefs in the area.)

“As the water warms, all the fish on these structures will move out to at least 130 or 150 feet of water around wrecks about 45 miles offshore. They will stay there until next fall when temperatures start cooling again. Then the AJs will show up on these inshore spans again sometime around Thanksgiving give or take a few weeks. They stay here all winter in shallower water and don’t move out again until it gets too warm for them and they move to the deepwater wrecks for the cooler depths they require.”

Suggested terminal tackle: leader tippet is 40-pound mono. Over the bridge spans you’ve got to stop them. You put the brakes on them, otherwise you’ll lose your line on cutoffs. Anywhere else but over the spans you can get away with 30-pound test because there is less likelihood of a cutoff.

FS