Captain’s Corner: Ed Walker

The Tampa Bay Times

By Ed Walker

Before the weather started causing cancelled charters, were looking forward to targeting kingfish on fly-fishing gear. The kings had moved in close to shore and were stacked up around bait masses in various spots from Venice to Tarpon Springs.

To get a kingfish to eat a fly takes a fair amount of chum and a bit of knowledge of their mannerisms. We start by slow trolling live baits and marking each bite on the GPS plotter. Once we identify the locations of the school we drop anchor and hang a block of chum over the side. We then start live chumming with scaled sardines. If the fish come into the chum we continue to feed them live baits until they are hanging around the stern of the boat waiting to be fed. We then cast a shiny fly that mimics the bait we are throwing. Surprisingly, the fish that are zooming around chasing chummers pefer to take a fly that isn’t moving or moving very little. Time and again we have tried the rapid retrieve and had them follow and turn it down.

The flies we tie for kings are usually made of white and green nylon “hair’, with shiny mylar strips, and large eyes. We epoxy the whole front end of the fly for weight and to give it improved durability. Of course, when fly-fishing for kingfish, wire leader is a must. We rig 12 inches of 44 lb test straight wire to the fly and connect this to our leader using an Albright Knot. A slow sinking intermediate fly-line line helps get the fly down into the water column where most of the bites occur.