KING MACKEREL
If intense, rod-bending, adrenaline-pumping action is your idea of a good time, fish behind the shrimp boats culling their catch in the Gulf. There you are bound to find more action than you are probably bargaining for with king mackerel. Any kind of cut or live bait will draw strikes from kings.

Big lipless crankbaits are even better choices, as are Snapper Slappers and the Calcutta Flash Foil Shad (6-inch), which I have had great success with this year. Silver spoons are also great choices, especially those tipped with a jig or cigar minnow, which are great to troll behind culling shrimp boats.

If you fish the rigs for kings, bring along some chum like menhaden oil or throw out chunks of pogy to attract the big fish. I have found that canned jack mackerel makes great chum and it is very inexpensive. All you have to do is punch holes in the can and put it in a fish basket tied off to the boat. It will not take long to create a massive (but environmentally safe) oil slick. Spoons are also good for working around the legs of a rig to see if there are any mackerel prowling around. Simply throw out the spoon and let it flutter and float with the current around the structure of the rig.

SHARKS
One can hardly mention kings without talking about sharks because they run together a lot, especially behind the shrimp boats. These fish fight as hard as anything out there does, and are quite tasty as well.

Large circle hooks rigged on steel leaders are the most popular terminal tackle for bagging sharks. Sharks cannot only cut a line with their teeth but also with their skin, which is sharp in its own right. One quick slap of the tail can cut even heavy-duty line with no problem. For targeting blacktips and spinners, my favorite chumming method involves bringing along a bucketful of small menhaden, grabbing a handful and squeezing. Some of them will float, others will sink quickly and others slowly. This creates a feeding frenzy situation with sharks that can allow you to sight cast to them with cut bait. The ideal setup for this kind of fishing is having one bait on the bottom for species like bull sharks and Atlantic sharpnose and a couple of free lines to get the species that feed in the upper level of the water column.

LING
At this time of year, a big bonus for anglers fishing around the rigs is to be found in the ling starting to show up in good numbers. Locating these unusual fish is no problem. They're suckers for structure in Gulf waters and can often be found hanging around oil platforms, stand pipes, jetties and buoys. They're also extremely curious and seem to be interested in taking a look at whoever is visiting their hangout.

One of the best tactics for locating ling around structure is to rev up the motors or take a paddle and pound the water's surface to get the attention of the fish. The first time I saw this done I thought the guy doing it was crazy. I had always been taught to be quiet in the boat and to avoid spooking the fish. But when I saw a huge ling rise up to the surface I was convinced that the technique was for real.

Ling are just plain different from any other fish, and that includes biting differently: A 50-pound ling sports a mouth that could probably inhale a small child, yet the same ling can become extremely hard to put a hook into. I've always wondered why they're so finicky, and have asked just about every expert there is. All of them have told me that ling are line shy, and now I believe it. A friend of mine who pursues ling a lot says he learned that lesson when he was toying around with a big ling that kept coming up to his boat. The big fish simply wanted nothing to do with his offering of cut pogy on a 7/0 hook and 50-pound-test line, but when he grabbed a medium action spinning combo spooled with 15-pound-test and rigged the same bait he got hooked up immediately. The big fish seemed to be aware of the heavier line.