Daniel Davisson got to the Jacksonville Beach Pier for live bait fishing with some buddies about mid-afternoon on August 4. He’s been a regular at the pier for over a decade. That day he drove from his home in the San Marco area of Jacksonville to the Atlantic Coast to tap the saltwater fishing on the long and popular Jacksonville Beach Pier.
“I got there about 3 p.m., and met some fishing pals,” Davisson tells Wired2fish. “We all use a trolley line system to send live baits out into the ocean from the end of the pier. It’s kind of like a zip line to get a big live bait far out from the pier. That day we were using live spots for bait, and we were hoping to catch king mackerel.”
A summer rain story had just passed over the pier, and the anglers were getting back to watching their lines and baits off the pier end.
“That’s when I saw a fish hit my bait, and I thought for sure it was a king mackerel because it smoked over 300 yards of line off my reel before it slowed down,” said Davisson, who’ll be a Junior at University of Florida in Gainesville this year. “The fish never jumped, but it was so heavy I figured it had to be a tarpon.”
Davisson battled the fish for about 15 minutes, then it made another long run, screaming 25-pound test monofilament line off his Shimano Speed Master II conventional reel. At the end of his line he had a 44-pound wire leader fitted to a size 4 treble hook. He used an 8-foot-long customized rod designed for 30- to 50-pound test line.
“I finally got the tarpon close to the pier, and it took several of us to beach the fish, while someone stayed high up on the pier with the rod and reel,” Davisson explained. “The fish jumped once near the beach, then it was all hands to get to the fish in the surf quickly and release it.’
Helping Davisson with his tarpon catch were fishing buddies Natt Smith, Eric Vergara and Hayden Nesbitt. Davisson and two friends reached the whipped tarpon in the surf, unhooked it, turned the fish around toward open water and got it moving offshore.
“The fish was in great shape, and fishermen on the pier watched it swim back out,” he says.
Later that afternoon, Davisson’s father Craig got to the pier to fish with his son.
“Dad got there about 5 p.m., and we went right out to the pier end and sent out another spot bait on a trolley line,” Daniel said. “He didn’t have a bait in the water for five minutes and it got crushed by a big, far running king mackerel.”
Craig fought the fish for a while, working it toward the pier when suddenly a huge 10-foot- long hammerhead shark shot out from under the pier and slammed the hooked kingfish.
“That shark hangs out around the pier and it hit dad’s kingfish at the tail, cutting it off,” Daniel said. “Sharks are always a problem, and there are some big 8- and 9-foot bull sharks that lurk around the pier, too.”
But the anglers were ready with a pier gaff and snatched Craig’s king within minutes after the shark severed its tail.
The kingfish – sans tail – still weighed 34-pounds. The anglers cleaned the mackerel and shared its meat with pier pals, who regularly share their catches with others.
“We took a chunk of that kingfish and blackened it that night for dinner,” Daniel said. “It was delicious.”
Tarpon fishing off the pier has been good this year, says Daniel. He’s caught about 14 tarpon this year, and estimated he’s caught about 100 silver kings off the pier over the many years he’s fished there.
“I’ve only caught seven kingfish this year,” says Daniel who has a broad social media following of his Pierpressure904 posts on YouTube, Instagram and TikTok. “But they’ve been big. Last year there were more kingfish, but they were smaller.
“We’ve learned to take what the ocean provides. Every year is different and great fun for our tight knit pier fishing community.”
