Plenty of line and ample helpings of patience made it possible to land both fish.

As Dawson noted, chumming can create a situation that does the work for you. “If you can anchor up, and get a big pile of baitfish in your chum line, you can make it your playground. You just became the structure.”

BEST BAITS

Kingfish will hit dead ballyhoo dressed with plastic skirts or rigged behind Sea Witches or trolling feathers, as well as large spoons and plugs trolled behind planers. Expect mostly juvenile “schoolie” fish with the non-breathing baits, whereas with live baiting, you stand a better chance of nailing a legitimate “smoker.”

Top live baits on the Central Gulf Coast include scaled sardines (“pilchards”), threadfin herring (“greenbacks”), cigar minnows, Spanish sardines and blue runners. Castnetting around piers, bridges and grassflats, or jigging near channel markers or over hard bottom with gold-hook sabiki rigs will provide a day’s worth of bait. (When bait is plentiful, tournament types like to dump their livewells at midday and restock to ensure fresh presentations.)

When you’re swinging for the fence, you might even run a couple of jumbo baits like ladyfish, mullet, trout, bluefish or mackerel. These take a little more time to capture and rig, but when they draw a strike, it’ll be your home run hookup.

An exception to the live bait rule is the long, lanky ribbonfish—caught mostly on the East Coast and fished dead with multiple hooks and a 1⁄ 4-ounce jig under its chin for true tracking. Undulating in the water, the ribbon appears to be alive, an enticing target.

Because the kingfish bite could occur anywhere between the surface and the sand, you’ll want to cover the water column with a spread of top and “deep” baits. Start by dropping at least one bait on a downrigger set to run just a few feet off the bottom. If you run a second downrigger bait, set this one farther behind the boat and position it at mid-depth. Monitor your bottom contour, as well as fish concentrations and adjust downrigger depths to drag baits through the hot zones.

Next, deploy two flatline baits at staggered distances. Run another bait at least 30 feet past your longer flatline and place this rod in an elevated holder. Set a large bait just 10 feet from the transom in the propwash. Keep fresh bodies rotated into the spread and try mixing various bait species at different positions, depths and distances until you find the winning combination.

FIGHT THE GOOD FIGHT

Ideal kingfish gear includes 7-foot medium-heavy conventional or spinning gear with 20- to 30-pound main line. Rods should have plenty of king-whooping backbone with flexible tips for easy bait presentation. Artificials usually run on 3- to 5-foot fluorocarbon leaders, but with live baiting, you’ll need wire rigs, as the king’s formidable teeth rip right through mono and flesh.

The standard “stinger” rig eliminates short strikes (cutting a bait in half and missing a single nose hook) by placing a hook at both ends of a baitfish. Essentially, a No. 4 or No. 6 treble dangles from a piece of No. 3 or 4 singlestrand wire attached to a lead hook (usually a 2/0 to 3/0 shortshank model). Haywire twists and four or five barrel wraps connect wire and hooks. Tackle sizes and configurations vary with personal preference, but the notion of a bait that bites back underscores all.