Plan was take the Pathfinder out of PC and slow troll mullet and pogies for some live bait action. Went bait catching in the Banana River the afternoon previous. Took a little searching but finally loaded the wells with 8-10″ silver mullet. Did a little trout fishing, and caught a few overslot fish. This one was right at 28″, cut off 2″ of tail in the pic. All the trout we released, but I had other plans for the silver mullet.
Left the Port at sunrise and ran south in search of pogies. Found pelicans working hard off of PAFB, marking lots of bait on the sounder. After many perfectly pancaked yet unsuccessful throws of the net. We figured out the bait was 1.5″ glass minnows with small Spanish Macks coming out of the water. After wasting an hour and a half looking for pogies we decided to head out to 80′ with our mullet. Not even five minutes in a huge kingfish skyrockets 15′ into the air on the flat line, missed the bait, and then did it again before finally finding the steel hooks of our stinger rig. Peeled off 100 yards of line before chewing thru our #4 wire. Not to worry, we are in the right spot, and shortly thereafter the longline starts singing. Had non-stop action with kingfish, one short cobia, sharks, and a bonita until we ran out of mullet. Kept a couple big kings for the smoker, but can’t stop thinking about the first fish that skyrocketed on the flat line as it absolutely dwarfed the 20 and 30lb kings we landed.
Source; Florida Sportsman
