From 4/5/01</font id=blue>
One of the funniest stories my father ever told me about his childhood was when he entered a kite-building contest. The contest had several different categories including the largest kite capable of flight. Dad entered this category and proceeded to build a kite so large that he could not carry it from his house on Beaufain Street to the contest in Hampton Park. He and my grandfather had to load the kite on to the roof of the car and drive it over to the park. When Dad arrived with the kite the judges were impressed with it’s immense size as it dwarfed all the other kites in it’s division; they explained to my father to win the contest he had to prove that his kite could fly. Dad ran at a full sprint for almost 100 yards before he finally got the immense kite in the air. Needless to say the judges were highly impressed, that is until Dad’s kite took a hard diving turn in the air, got wrapped up with several other kites, and all of them came plummeting to the ground.
When people started kite fishing in the mid-seventies it is not surprising that Dad was quick to go out and purchase a couple of fiberglass rod blanks and some nylon and construct his own fishing kite. Fortunately, this kite was quite a bit smaller than his competition kite and most of the time his is the only one in the air at the fishing grounds.
Kite fishing for King Mackerel and Sailfish, as well as a few other species, is quite popular in Florida and is really starting to catch on in the Lowcountry. Kites are most often used with live bait when drift fishing or anchored where their primary purpose is to spread live baits apart and away from the boat. Spreading baits can be quite difficult when: there is not an adequate current, if the wind and current are running opposite to one another, if the baits are mobile enough not to be effected by the current, or a combination of two or more of the above. In these situations a kite and a light breeze can prove to be invaluable.
Fishing kites are ty