Salt water keeps drawing fishermen back

Blue water fever is the term fishermen use to describe their love for the sport of deep sea fishing.

“Once you get salt water in your blood, it’s hard to get out. It’s especially hard when you are reeling in big king mackerels,” according to fishing boat Capt. Shane Hollar.

Hollar, from Advance, Craig Hampton, of China Grove, and Steve Powell, of Salisbury, have formed a king mackerel fishing team which they call the Never Ready team. They competed in the Southern King Association Tournament Trial, which sponsors mackerel competition all along the East Coast.

So far this year, the Never Ready team has won money in the Long Bay Certified Reef Association Tournament, the Shallotte Inlet King Mackerel Tournament and the South Brunswick Island King Classic Tournament. They also competed in the U.S. Open King Mackerel Tournament out of Southport.

The team competes in the association’s division for boats 23 feet and less, and at the end of the Southport tournament, they were leading their division in points.

“We tried bass fishing competition, but there just wasn’t enough money,” Hollar said. “You can spend $800 to $1,000 just getting ready, practicing and traveling to a (bass) tournament, and if you win, you don’t only get a few hundred dollars. After all the expenses, you don’t have any money left. But with king mackerel fishing tournaments, you could win as much as $100,000 in one tournament.”

King mackerel fishing is more of a challenge, Hollar said.

“You just can’t jump into your tackle box and dig out tackle and go fishing. In deep sea fishing, you have to learn to respect nature and gain knowledge of the sea.

“There’s a lot to learn before you go deep sea fishing. It’s a big ocean, and you have to be able to find your way around and back home again and be able to find the fish you’re looking for. These big kinds didn’t grow big by being dumb.”

To outsmart the big fish, the team checks the water temperature they’re known to favor, looks for bait fish in the water, watching birds working the water for food, and searches out ocean locations where bottom conditions might draw the quarry.

But if they can ever find the kings and offer the right bait, the fun begins.

“It’s total mayhem when you hook a king, especially when there are four reels going off at the same time,” Hamilton said. “Everybody on the team has a job to do when a king hits. One member is driving the boat, another gets the lines out and another takes care of the bait.”

Added Powell: “It’s very important to take care of your bait. We use live bait for kings, and if your bait isn’t live and active, you have wasted a day.”

Gaffing the fish is also important. “You don’t want to fight a fish for 30 minutes and not be able to gaff it at the boat,” Powell said. “When we hook a king, we fight each one like a monster until we see it.”

But even 10-pound kings can fight like fish 10 times their size, the men say. They let the small ones go.

The U.S. Open King Mackerel at Southport drew a record number of boats. More than 500 boat captains signed up for the two-day tournament, with three to six fishermen on each boat. Boats came from Georgia, South Carolina, Florida, Mississippi and Virginia.

A lot of the kings weighed 20 to 40 pounds. Marine biologists from the N.C. Marine Fisheries agency checked each king for general condition. They will use the data for records to determine the health and population of the king mackerel fisheries.

Kings caught in the tournament are sold, and the money raised goes to charities.

On the second day of the Southport tournament, the Never Ready team was ready. Up by 4 a.m., they had breakfast, bought bait and were on the water by 6 a.m., an hour before the official release time. They were the first boat at the check-out station, avoiding long lines.

Each boat captain has special places they like to fish, and one by one, other boats appeared at the Cape Fear River release point. It looked like Christmas with all the red and green boat lights bobbing up and down in the early morning twilight.

The sea offered a rough welcome on the way out, with waves rolling 5 to 9 feet. They sounded like explosions as they hit the boat deck.

The Never Ready team head to their first fishing location at the Sea Buoy, the last buoy before going out to the open sea. The team was the first on the scene, but as the sun came, the crew could see they weren’t alone.

They guessed that some 300 boats were around them.

“It looked like the Wal-Mart parking lot,” Hamilton said.

When kings didn’t hit, they moved again, deeper and farther out to the 12-mile rocks. Now they were alone, not another boat in sight. But still no kings.

The crew worked hard, as long as they had time to land a big king before the tournament deadline for checking back in. But no luck that day.

The team’s goal is to stay in the top 10 in points and qualify for the national tournament.

Some teams fish for years and have never had a chance to compete in the national tournament.

“We now have a chance during our first year,” Hollar said with pride.

Contact James Barringer at 704-797-4260 or photography@salisburypost.com .