Kingfish fis


the real Mecca for kayak kings is the sugar beaches stretching from Panama City, Florida to Orange Beach in Alabama. The surf here is so clear along this ideal migratory route that on perfect days, kingfish prowl as shallow as four feet. Skeptical?


Consider that in late April of this


year, more than 100 kings were landed from the 1,600-foot Navarre Pier in Florida in a single day. Several days later, that “push” of kingfish reached Alabama, where a reported 73 were landed in one day from Gulf Shore’s new 1,550-foot pier.


That’s a 10-minute paddle, at most. TIDE


Depending on the time of year, some key spots along the Gulf Coast offer paddlers their best bet to tie into a kingfish without the astronomical fuel bill. Each of the following venues has different baitfish species, paddle times, structures offshore, prevailing wind and kingfish seasons to time your next economy kingfish outing.


JACKSONVILLE


Mike Hogan catches kings during summer along the beach in Jack- sonville, but most often he finds kings while casting at tarpon following men- haden, the dominant baitfish from here north. Long-time observers lament that


www.joincca.org


the menhaden population is a pitiful fraction from 50 years ago, but kings and pogy baitfish are still around. The good folks on the Jacksonville pier told me their anglers land about 100 kings each year.


“Find menhaden along the beach


here, and you’ll find tarpon and a few kings in late summer,” advises Hogan, who is the tournament director for perhaps the biggest kayak tourney in the country. With 300 boats prowling local salt marshes during this event, he says he doesn’t even want an off- shore division, though the prospect of kings within a paddle of the beach is hard to ignore.


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