Thread: king mackerel pier setup.

I'm from St Louis and travel to panama city beach once a year at the end of may. I enjoy fishing off of the piers and would like to try my luck with king mackerel this year. I am having trouble finding information on catching these fish from a pier, I have a 8 foot penn prevail surf rod that I use for river catfish. and I like the penn battle reels would say a penn battle 5000 and the prevail rod be strong enough for king? if not is there any good setups for under 150?

Thanks
Fitz.

First off, WELCOME fitz!

The Penn Prevails are primarily intended as a surf fishing rod (with the long butt),
however the 8' (or even 9') might work OK for occasional pier use.

The Battle is certainly a decent king fishing reel, but a 5000 may be a little small IMHO unless you plan to fish braid (30#) on it and that is frowned upon on the FL piers.
I suggest a 6000 Battle with 17# mono would do nicely.
Of course you can get that reel on a Penn Battle combo for only $20 more than the reel costs by itself. just sayin...

thanks been reading up all day, its slow at work, yea 20 more for a combo is worth it. why is braid frowned upon? don't know much about pier etiquette, i'm reading that you won't get as many hits. what about leading with mono? i have been doing that for spanish the last couple of years, i don't want to spoil fishing for anyone else.

Many folks don't like braid because it is more difficult to see and tangles more easily with mono and tends to cut it off if a running fish puts pressure on someone elses' mono.

Right!
'Top shotting' with mono is a good compromise to get more line on a smaller reel.
The only time anyone knows you have braid is when a bigger fish runs out more than 150 yards or so.