Some friends and I were looking for an escape in January and decided to fly down to Key West for some Kingfish action.  I'd read all the fish reports I could find and started developing a plan of action.  I gathered up all my saltwater tackle and a couple of medium action spinning rods and away we went!  When we got there, the weather was beautiful, the water was beautiful, and we couldn't wait to get out and catch some fish - but what to use and where to start?  We stopped in some local tackle shops to find out where to go and what to use - with about 10 different answers.  We decided to rent a 21' center console from the Navy marina and used this map to find some good spots.

After buying some frozen pre-rigged ballyhoo, we left the marina about 630am and searched the shallows for schools of bait.  I figured some live bait in the well wouldn't hurt our chances if we ran out of ballyhoo....but the search was over just about as quick as it started - no schools of bait.  That's a problem if you're not familiar with the area - and we weren't.  So, with our 6 rigged ballyhoo, we headed out of Key West heading due south toward Sand Key.  Like all fishermen that don't know really where to fish in a new place, we figured if we followed another boat that looked like they knew where they were going, we could at least have an idea where to start.  After making our way through some rough water, we found a big concentration of boats about 7 miles south of Key West, just on the other side of the reef.  Our depth finder showed between 35 and 50 feet of water and plenty of schools of bait under the boat.

I rigged up a couple of spinning rods I brought with 15 lb test and barrel swivels and wrapped the steel leader of the rigged ballyhoo to the swivels.  All around us were various size boats, from the big charter boats trolling heavy tackle to smaller charter boats with kites to our little boat with three guys trying to look like we knew what we were doing.  We trolled around with a rod on each side of the boat, trying to parallel the reef which was about 200 yards to our north.  It didn't take long for the first strike - a good sign indeed!  It proved unsuccessful though, and the only thing we got back to the boat was the head of the ballyhoo and some tattered remains of his body.  We quickly re-rigged another bait and tossed it out - and soon we had another strike and after a great fight, we landed a nice 10 lb King! This continued for about another hour or so, and we had three nice fish in the cooler from 5 to 15 lbs....but unfortunately for us, we'd exhausted our supply of ballyhoo and the nearest bait shop was 7-8 miles away in Key West.  With three fish left for our limit (2 fish apiece), I dug into my tackle box an pulled out old faithful - a Cotton Cordell Redfin - yes, the same Redfin that catches bass and just about everything else in the world.  I rigged up about 3 feet of steel leader and tied on the Redfin and tossed it out.  I had a Yo-Zuri minnow I had caught snapper and amberjacks on in Baja so I figured what the hell and tied it on to the other rod.  We trolled forever - maybe 3 minutes - and had a double hook-up!  What fun that was trying to keep the rocket like Kings from tangling up in our lines.  After gaffing both fish and tossing them in the cooler, we thought we'd better only put out one line (with only 1 fish left for our limit).  The last fish took about 15 minutes of trolling to find - and what a beauty! This fish clobbered the Redfin and took off, stripping about 75 yards of line out before he cooled off a bit.  We fought that fish hard and eventually got him in the boat - after a bit of snapping and biting.  One of the guys that gaffed the fish got a little too close to the chompers of the mighty Kingfish - he has a nice scar on his left hand to prove it.  Note to self:  always have a long handled gaff when you're fighting Kings.

With our limit in the cooler, and the winds picking up, we headed back to the marina quite pleased with ourselves for finding the fish.  Not a bad day of fishing all in all.  We had our limit by 11am, but it proved something to us about not knowing the local area you're fishing for the first time.  If you stick to baits that look and act like what the fish are chasing, you've won half the battle.  The other half is just finding where the fish are.  If there's a concentration of boats in a certain spot, then that's probably a good place to start.  We started in the vicinity of the other boats, but caught all our fish on the way outer fringes of mass of boats.  Call it luck or superior instincts (I like to think it's the latter...), but we found the fish and boy did they taste good coming out of the smoker!