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Just wondering if anybody else is noticing a lot less king mackeral being caught. Here in southern North Carolina, catches have been way down. Maybe just part of a cycle; maybe they're in trouble. Anybody else seeing this? Where?
They moved to the northern Gulf Coast and took up with the gas rigs here. They are quite plentiful here. All sizes. Just toss out a silver eel and wait one to ten minutes at 1-2 knots. Caught what we wanted and went home.
Well could you guys on the Gulf coast kindly scare some of 'em up to the Carolinas? People are winning tournaments with fish in the teens and lots of empty fish boxes.
I'm on the gulf coast and if I chase the kings I have seen up there all you will get is 20 pounders. I am 0 for 2 on the king tournaments this year which is dissappointing because last year I did pretty well. Going to LA this weekend, if I don't find a good one there I am going to go to the witch doctor to have my hex removed.
Just got a report of kingfish being caught areound one mile off the beach near Wilmington NC. Cannot give exact location or size due to upcoming tournament.
But seriously, there really aren't that many kings being caught lately... I've fished two tournament already this year and have not seen a king! But its strange because earlier in the year all the piers slayed em'... I dunno, maybe they will start turning on before this weekend (Raleigh saltwater tournament).
-Marcus "Reel Heel"
I have not kept up with the rest of the west coast, but around the Tampa Bay area the kings were here in decent numbers but I never heard/read about anyone landing anything but "schoolies" We are smack in the middle of tarpon season now so no one the I know is really paying attention to the kings anymore [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif[/img]
Dreamweaver, and the rest of you in the Gulf did better than I thought! From Palm Beach to Vero there have been Kings caught up to 40 lbs w/ many in the 30's. Only snakes!!
Hydro,I've been three times this year and have yet to put a king in my fish box,I did catch two snakes and they were small enough to put in the large cooler so I didn't dirty the fish box.I know at the first of the season, they were catching them on the piers, but seems like the week after they started to heat up we had that 3 to 5 day cold snap,and it seem to run them back off the beach.I swear I think the weird weather patterns this year has got them screwed up. [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_confused.gif[/img] Good luck to you guys fishing the tournaments,kinda wish I still had a fishing team.
AHHH....0 for 3 now. Well we did get a 33.49 on the second day of an aggregate tournament after not making the 20lb min the first day. Very frustrating year so far. Fishing has been somewhat poor. This last weekend no boat caught a king over 50lbs. And this tournament was in Venice LA, where I figured there would be at least 4 or 5 fish over 50lbs for the weekend. Some people are still finding quality fish though, so I guess they are out there. Hopefully, this weekend will be better.
Yeah, it looks like more of them are starting to show up around the Carolina coast in the last two or three weeks or so. Still, from all i can gather it looks like there are fewer being caught than in the past few seasons. And the sizes seem to be down as well. I guess the question is 'should we be concerned'?
Where are the kings this year? 
