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How to Fish a Downrigger for King Mackerel

A downrigger puts your bait at a depth you choose instead of a depth you hope for. Here is how deep, how heavy, how far back and how fast.

By David Rose, September 2026

Downrigger ball and loaded rod while trolling for king mackerel

01 — Start here

A depth you pick, not a depth you hope for

King mackerel are an inshore fish by offshore standards. Most of the water you fish for them is under 100 feet, and most of the trolling happens well above the bottom. They also relate to structure — wrecks, artificial reefs and the like — which means a lot of king fishing is spent circling something rather than covering open water.

That is the situation a downrigger is built for. It puts a bait at a depth you chose, holds it there while you work around a piece of structure, and lets go cleanly when a fish eats. The rest of this post is the settings: how deep, how heavy, how far back, how fast.

The short answer

Set between a third and a half of the water depth. Start with an 8 lb ball. Run the bait about 25–30 feet behind it, off an outrigger clip, at under 5 knots. Cigar minnows are the usual bait.

02 — Depth

A third to a half of the water depth

The simplest rule for a downrigger is to set it somewhere between a third and a half of the depth of the water you are in. In 50 feet of water, that puts the ball 15 to 25 feet down.

Notice what that rule is not. You are not trying to match a mark on the sounder. Kingfish are usually not stacked at one exact depth waiting for you to find it, and chasing a number you saw two minutes ago is a good way to spend the day adjusting instead of fishing. Treat the depth as a range and let the fish tell you whether it is right.

The rule

A third to a half of the water depth. In 50 feet, run 15 to 25 feet down.

What about blowback?

Blowback is the ball trailing behind the boat instead of hanging under it, which means your bait is shallower than the counter says. It matters a great deal at high speed and great depth. At king mackerel speeds and depths it barely matters at all — the cable angle stays close to vertical, so the counter is close enough to trust. Fudge it a few feet if the angle looks steeper than usual and move on.

03 — The ball

Start with 8 pounds

Ball weight is a function of two things: how fast you are trolling and how deep you are going. Faster and deeper both need more lead, because both increase the force trying to push the ball back and up.

King fishing sits at the light end of both. The water is usually under 100 feet, you are trolling under 50, and the baits that work best behind a downrigger are slow ones. Under those conditions an 8 lb ball is a good place to start. If you end up fishing deeper or faster than that, go heavier.

Eight pound downrigger ball set for king mackerel

Slow baits and shallow water mean you do not need much lead.

04 — The release

Run an outrigger clip inline

The release is the part that decides whether the whole setup works, and it is the part people fuss over most. My preferred rigging is an outrigger clip inline between the downrigger and the ball. The main line goes in the clip, the clip rides above the ball, and the whole thing goes down together.

Below the clip I run about four feet of 200 lb mono down to the ball, with a 200 lb snap swivel at the top so the whole assembly comes off in one piece.

Outrigger clip rigged inline above a downrigger ball

The outrigger clip ties inline above the ball.

What the strike looks like

You will not feel a king eat on a downrigger the way you feel one on a flat line. The first thing that happens is the main line coming free of the clip, and the rod loading up as it comes tight.

At that point, in most cases, the fish has already hooked itself. There is nothing to swing at and nothing to time. Get the rod out of the holder and wind.

05 — Distance back

Twenty-five to thirty feet behind the ball

Ask ten boats how far behind the ball the bait should run and the answers will spread from 10 feet to 100. That range is real, and most of it works.

My own view is that anything beyond about 50 feet is excessive and unnecessary — you are adding line between you and the fish without adding anything else. I run about 25 to 30 feet and have never felt short-changed.

There is a school of thought that says the vibration of the ball itself attracts kings, and that you should run the bait close to it for that reason. I have never found that to be the case. If you want to test it, the cost of trying is a few feet of line.

06 — Bait and speed

Why a downrigger means a slow bait

Downrigger fishing for kings usually comes down to two baits: live bait or cigar minnows. Both are slow-troll baits, and cigar minnows are the popular choice.

Ballyhoo can be a great king bait too, and they have one real advantage: you can troll them faster and cover more ground. But a downrigger limits your speed in general, and kings are often on structure, which means circling it rather than running long straight lines. Both of those push you toward the slower end, which is where cigar minnows live.

In practice that means under 5 knots. Slow keeps blowback down and keeps you working the structure instead of running past it. The full ladder by bait and species is in best offshore trolling speed by bait and species.

One more thing that comes with kings rather than with downriggers: their teeth. That is a leader question, and it is covered in wire leaders for king mackerel and wahoo.

Rigged cigar minnow for downrigger trolling for king mackerel

Slow water speed is what a cigar minnow wants anyway.

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07 — The spread

One downrigger, sometimes two, never more

What a downrigger really buys you is coverage of the water column. Your flat lines and riggers are all working the top few feet. A downrigger puts one bait somewhere the rest of the spread never reaches.

I never troll with more than two, and most often I run one. If I am fishing a single downrigger and the strikes are coming predominantly from it rather than from the surface baits, that is the signal to put a second one down.

What does not change is that some baits stay on the surface. Sinking the whole spread because the deep one got bit is how you find out the fish had moved up an hour ago.

A downrigger is not the only way to get a bait down, incidentally — a planer does the same job differently, and that is its own technique, covered in planer fishing for wahoo.

Rigs that hold up to king mackerel teeth

Keel-weighted lures and ready-made stinger rigs that keep a cigar minnow swimming straight at downrigger speed.

No spin

The keel weight keeps the bait tracking straight at the slow speeds a downrigger needs.

Wire or mono

Stinger rigs in 7-strand wire for kings, or monofilament when the bite is finicky.

Handmade in the USA

Every lure poured, weighted and checked before it ships.

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