Captain’s Corner: Jay Mastry

The Tampa Bay Times

Last weeks cold snap may not have been ideal for our spring breakers but it may have been just what we needed to jumpstart our spring run of kingfish.  Water temperature that had gotten into the eighties in some places may have slowed their migration a bit.  It’s now cooled and more to their liking.  When kingfishing I’ve always preferred the 70 to 75 degree range.  There’s some kings being caught now, a sign of good things to come as conditions improve.  A seemingly endless string of windy days and small craft advisories had hindered many from getting out snooping around to locate them.  The Ships Channel has long been a personal favorite area to work when hunting early spring kings.  Bait tends to congregate around many of the markers that line the channel and so will the kings to take advantage.  We’ll often start at markers 7 and 8 and work our way towards the Whistler, the end marker of the “ditch”.  Each set of markers are about a mile and a half apart.  We will concentrate our efforts around the buoys holding the largest concentration of bait.  If you’ve been wanting to get your feet wet doing some tournament fishing, now’s the time.  Soon there will be kingfish tournaments scheduled nearly every weekend.  Kingfish don’t care how big a boat you have or how many motors you have on it.  There has been many tournaments won around here in a 20 footer with a single engine within two miles of the beach.

Captain Jay Mastry