Family time with some big ajs and a smoker!

Got a late booking to get out and do some rod bending for sunday, so got the boat ready and off the docks of pineland marina by 645. Talked over our gameplan and decided to go for some bigger fish over the wrecks.  Made a bait pit stop around 70-80 feet of water which produced a handful of spanish sardines, 1 nice speedo, 1 blue runner, a handful of squirrel fish, a couple spot tailed grunts... With the full moon, i wanted to get out as early as possible so didnt spend a ton of time catching live bait... 
pulled up to the wreck and set out some bottom rigs... lots of fish marked throughout the water column, but no takers on first 2 drifts... set up a flatline with the runner on a stinger rig and it was almost immediately game on... fish ripped off drag and didnt want to stop....Chris took the rod and fought it like a champ.. excellent use of the rod... every time he would gain 20 or 30 yds the fish would rip out that much or more... After a good back and forth battle, a nice AJ was put in the boat. 
Next up would be Melissa whos  flatline also took off like a bat out of hell, but the run was much shorter and less vigorous... a few minutes later a small barracuda was added to the box.
Next up was Richie, our youngest angler on the boat... We were running low on baits at this point and had a grunt and squirrel fish out on the flatlines...   the rod with the 6500 size penn spinfisher v with the squirrel fish with a 6/0 circle hook on 80 lb leader doubles overs and absolutely SCREAMS off the reel.  I slowly kept tightening the drag, but this fish just kept going!  First run dumped nearly the whole spool to where i could see the backing!  As soon as the fish stopped its initial run, Richie cranked like crazy to gain back line as the fish was running back at us... he did an amazing job of keeping a nice bend in the rod so as not to take off the pressure.  The fish came towards the boat but had a bunch of energy left in him, and made multiple runs away from the boat. little by little, you could see the fish starting to loose its stamina and energy.  Finally, we broke its spirit and a true SMOKER kingfish hit the deck on the end of the gaff. High fives and WOOOO's! all the way around. Quick picture and in the box it went. 
Set up for another drift and flatline gets hit yet again... this one rips off some serious drag and had some shoulders!  Melissa fought the fish till her arms gave out and then Chris took over from there... some of this fishes runs were just amazing..... 50-100 yds gone in no time!  After a short while, we got it boatside for a quick photo and then released to fight another day.
The next flatline went off and Richie is up fighting another fish... it pulled off some drag, but not like its bigger brothers. He put the whoopin on a fun sized almaco jack. 
We had a handful of other takes and drops, slashed baits with no hookup... Altogether an absolutely fantastic day with everyone smiling. 
We caught a pretty good rain storm just as we entered Captiva Pass, so raincoats on and a slow cruise till we got thru the thick of it. 
A little rain is always welcome to rinse the boat and gear down a the end of a trip.  LOL
Here is to hoping the weather Gods send me some decent weather this weekend for Saturday... 
Tight Lines all!