November Mackerel in Panama City Beach: Part Two
Eugene L. 01.24.25
After a decent day of fishing for mackerel, but still no king on ice for the trip, I hoped day two would be better. According to the weatherman, the wind was supposed to pick up as a front started pushing into the area in the evening. So, as long as the wind really did start blowing and the rain storms started, we were possibly looking at a great day of mackerel fishing. The plan was to get out to the pier pretty close to sunrise, but unfortunately, I hit snooze on the alarm after a not-super-restful night’s sleep. So, after washing up and starting my day with a cup of noodles and Diet Mtn Dew, I loaded the rods into the truck and made my way down the street to the pier.
Saltwater Fishing Coverage on OutdoorHub
- November Mackerel in Panama City Beach: Part One
- Fishing the World’s Longest Fishing Pier – The Tampa Skyway Fishing Pier
- Out of Season Offshore Bottom Fishing in Destin Florida PT. 2
- Out of Season Offshore Bottom Fishing in Destin Florida PT. 1
- Running to the Otherside of the Gulf Stream – North Florida Bluewater Fishing
Once in the parking lot of the pier, I noticed there were a decent amount of cars already parked, with the good forecast plenty of people were out already trying to get a king. I got my pier cart loaded up and headed towards the end. Unfortunately, the conditions weren’t looking great. There had been a storm or two that passed through overnight that had the water up shallow and looking terrible, and the wind was not where it should have been. Also, I had forgotten to put my UA Shoremen deck boots away the night before, so they had gotten rained on overnight. I had to leave them and the insoles on the pier cart to dry off before I could wear them later. While deck boots might seem overkill to some, many fish out here have sharp teeth and spines that can stick you easily. I have also ruined plenty of sneakers with fish blood, so I stick to deck boots.
After a rough start, the water looked a bit better out at the end. Not great but not terrible either, and as soon as I walked up, there was a flurry of action with a couple of bonito and some larger Spanish mackerel being landed on plugs. Things were looking up a bit, so I made bait, dropping down a sabiki hoping for some big cigs or maybe a herring. Instead, I was getting a full sabiki of small potato chip LYs, which were too small to throw on my king rig.
I swapped over to my Spanish rig, a 4000 Daiwa Certate on a 9ft Penn Carnage rod. For the leader, I swapped over to 40lb fluorocarbon with a long shank J hook and the smallest swivel I had in my tackle box. That way, I had the best odds of getting a bite on these small baits while still not getting cut off too easily.
While the top water plug bite had died down as I caught my bait and rigged up the rod, I could still see the schools of bait around the pier getting slashed by predatory fish. I cast off the pier’s west side with the wind to my back and just freelined the LY.
The bait had barely started swimming off before it got snatched up. I let the fish take a bit of line so it could fully take down the bait before closing the bail. The drag started singing right away. I had forgotten to test where my drag was set on this reel, so it was a little light. I tightened it down right away and got a decent little Spanish mackerel in quickly before the damn porpoise could show up.
I had a fish in the kill bag within 15 minutes of walking out, so even with the rough start to the morning, it looked like today was going to be alright.
I kept fishing the same rig with the little LYs off the west side of the pier, just flipping in Spanish after Spanish over the rail for the rest of the morning. Then suddenly, the bite died down, and instead of mackerel, I ran into one of my most hated bycatches, the remora.
These guys are pests around the pier, eating anything that smells like meat. While most people think of them as shark suckers, they are free swimming and gladly will eat live bait. While I’ve seen some people even kill them to try and “cull the herd,” it is a Sisyphean task, with no end to these gross things in sight. After catching a few in a row, I decided to take a short break, sit with my buddy Ivan, and have some of the delicious shumai that he brings out to the pier.
Eventually, though, it was time to fish again. As noon started to dip down and the day went on, the bite did start back up, with many more Spanish mackerel being caught; still no kings in sight, the weatherman had been wrong once again. The wind that was supposed to be blowing in the high teens was barely blowing five mph. Instead of scattered storms, it only sprinkled once that afternoon.
While it sounds weird to want storms while fishing on the pier, the craziest bite I have ever seen was during a storm blowing 30+. While challenging to fish, if you could get a bait to sink more than a foot, you were getting bites–it didn’t matter what the bait was: live cig, dead cig, LY, or even a dried-up pinfish you found between the deck boards. I saw 11 people hooked up at one time that day, with many people going home limited out.
Unfortunately, today was not that day; while the Spanish mackerel numbers were great, the big fish weren’t really hanging around. And by a couple of hours before sunset, the wind had almost completely slacked off. I decided to call it a day early, packed the cart, and got to cleaning most of my day’s catch. While Spanish is great eating, it is also great bait. So a good portion of my catch would be kept whole and later rigged up as swordfish baits.
After cleaning the catch, I took the quarter-mile walk back to the truck and transferred the catch into the truck cooler, making sure everything was iced down well and facing the belly cavity to help drain out any blood. After that, I got a po boy and some red beans & rice at David’s New Orleans Style Cafe & Sno-Balls, a solid little cafe with good food, before returning to the hotel to watch the craziness of election day news.
