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November Mackerel in Panama City Beach: Part One
Fall fishing for mackerel on the piers in the Emerald Coast can be very hit or miss, especially the later into the fall you get. So this year I knew I was going to go down to fish for a few days, I was trying to pick the best days possible to go. Checking the weather to see what the temp and wind forecasts were as well as projected weather fronts. So with a couple of weeks of good king mackerel reports and good king mackerel weather being forecasted I went down for 3 days of pier fishing right at the beginning of November. While when I was in college leaving the house at 1 or 2 am to drive down to the Gulf was no problem at all for me, this let me get to the pier right at sunrise on the first day of fishing, giving me the most fishing time possible. But I have to say I’ve slowed down now, I left pretty late this trip at 4:30 – 5 am and got to the County Pier parking lot around 10 am.
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After getting the pier cart loaded up and all my rods unpacked and set up, I paid my fee to fish the pier and started heading toward the end. The shallows were honestly terrible, just mud, which honestly has been the theme of the year for the fishing at the pier. Dirty water generally sucks for mackerel fishing and there has been a ton of it this year. This also double sucked for this trip because there was a month-long King mackerel tournament that I was hoping to weigh a fish in, but I did at least see some cleaner water towards the end. So seeing the shallows were shot I just kept walking the 1/4 mile to the end of the pier and got to the first important step of “making bait”. On a rod that would normally be used for bass, I tied on a green #6 sabiki rig with a 1oz weight and started hopping it on the bottom. Instead of working the sabiki more aggressively, I was letting the wave action do most of the work. I let the weight sit on the sand while I was working the rod to get just get tight to the weight while not lifting it out of the sand. This was the ticket I got several hits on the first cast, which I saw was 3 cigar minnows as I was reeling them in. But I lost two of them trying to lift them up to the pier, which happens often with smaller sabiki rigs, the hooks are small and thin. But I had a nice quality cigar minnow for live bait, I got that hooked onto my Cavitt Customs king rod w/ PENN Spinfisher VII 6500 Bailess, and pitched it out on a flatline to try for king mackerel.
Hooked in the tail, cigar minnows will swim out away from you, getting further away from the pier. So I kept the line off the line roller as the cigar minnow kept swimming out, keeping tension with my index finger to feel the minnow swim. Eventually, I felt a tap on the line, as well as saw a flash in the water as my bait got slashed by a mackerel. Thinking it was a king, I dropped the line off my finger and let the fish just take slack out to make sure the mackerel swallowed the bait down. After letting it take some more line for a few more seconds I flipped the line on the roller to set the hook, hoping to get a screaming run from the fish. And then a funny thing happened, I didn’t get a screaming king mackerel run. Instead, I got a short pull from a larger Spanish mackerel. Which sucks that it wasn’t a king I can’t complain about having meat in the kill bag within 20 minutes of walking out onto the pier.
So using the one king bait I had, I had to pick up the sabiki rig again. But now I was struggling to find more baits. When the bait is plentiful and easy to catch I’ll just fish them as I catch them giving any extras to friends or throwing them back. But with it being a struggle this day I pulled out a new livewell I got from Frabill, a collapsible bait bucket with an integrated aerator. After getting the livewell filled with some fresh seawater, I started fishing the sabiki again the same way. After going around the end of the pier to a few different spots I did finally find the bait again.
This little livewell did surprisingly well even with some bigger turbo cigs in it, the rounded corners of it made sure more fragile baits like LYs and sardines wouldn’t choke in corners. With 6 baits in the livewell it was time to get back to fishing for kings.
So it was the same, deal take a cigar minnow from out of the livewell, hook it behind the scutes of the tail, and sling that bait out to swim away from the pier. Which then got promptly grabbed by flipper, which at least this time missed the hook unlike in Tampa. So after a swearing at a marine mammal for a second, I rebaited and slung another bait out. Same deal letting it swim out and keeping the line on my index finger. After letting this bait swim off the west side of the pier for 10 minutes I felt it start to panic, trying to swim off from whatever was spooking it. Then I felt a tap, and let the line go so whatever had it could swallow it down.
I was then rewarded with another Spanish mackerel, which again are great to eat. It’s just they’re not my target species. This was just how this first day went till almost sunset. With everyone trying for kings, but none to be found. Then maybe 30 minutes before sunset, finally a king showed up, coming up off the bottom right next to the pier. It slashed and ate a cigar minnow next to the pier, but pulled off with seconds of starting its first run. You could feel the wave of disappointment go through every one of us out at the end when this happened. I mean it wasn’t a big king but any king was better than none at this point.
I kept fishing till sunset but beside a few Spanish mackerel coming over the side on spoons pulled behind bubbles that was it for the day. Even without catching a king, I at least got to spend a day on the pier with some friends, so better day than being up in Georgia.
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