How to catch Spanish mackerel In this blog, I will endeavour to give advice to new fisho's who have never caught a mackerel, but wish to learn the basics. Habitat / Location In my experience, I have found Mackies in offshore locations where the water is clearer and there is structure or current causing bait schools to bunch up and on which the Mackies will inevitably feed on. When looking for area's likely to hold Mackeral, I initially like to review my navigation charts looking for offshore shoals and sharp rises in the ocean floor where the water is deeper than 10 metres. These area's are indicated on your charts where the contour lines bunch up and form shapes, circles and the like. The closer the contour lines, the sharper the rise in the sea bed. During summer months, they can also be consistently targeted from rocky headlands, but I do not engage in this method, so will not make any suggestions here. My fishing is nearly always from a trailer boat, so I'll stick to that. I have found deep offshore gutters to be a favourite and where I find a corner with a back eddy in this type of location, I will then start sounding for bait schools and mark them on my sounder to hopefully give me a series of marks which I can join together into a trolling run. In the Northern Territory, I had great consistent success targeting such areas as South Gutter and often had my bag limit on solid mackerel of 10-12 kilo's in less than an hour of arriving. I utilise a Humminbird 998 Si Di on a Polycraft Warrior boat as my chosen electronics and boating package. I find the combo to be very easy to use, reliable and very capable for all types of fishing adventures. When sounding my target area, I have found that because of the mackerels fast and often erratic swimming motion, they show up as a zig zag line on my sounder as opposed to a regular arch of a typical fish show on the bottom. Once you have found mackerel and see this on your sounder, you'll understand exactly what I mean as it's quite easy to pick and you'll know your on the money. Once I have my waypoints set, I simply set a rod off each corner with the drag set just tight enough that it won't pull drag at a speed of approximately 8 knots. I use different combo's, but anything that can hold 300 plus yards of 20-30 lb braid does the job for me. Mackies aren't dirty fighters and usually won't head for the bottom, but they hit bloody hard and fast! Newby's thinking they need to have drags set tight will be disappointed by snapped lines and lost lures, so have your drag set only as tight as you need to avoid line peeling off on the troll. For trolling, I personally love the Halco 120 and 160 series and X -Rap lures. Both can be trolled fast and true and come with good hardware to take on these toothy beasts. Colours can vary, but over time the Qantas' coloured red head and white body has proven to stand out as a favourite. I also like the purple/ maroon silver Halco 160 and it is my personal favourite. The choice is personal, but many anglers targeting Mackies will use a short length of steel wire trace as their teeth are like razors! Any piece of braid or mono under strain simply touching these weapons will be sliced instantly. I have found if trolled at speed the big lures are usually ok without wire and appear more attractive to the fish, but I still get plenty with wire and it's a good insurance policy, so I use a light (40lb) black plastic coated wire trace. The other method which is a ton of fun once you locate Mackies on the sounder is to mark them, switch off the motor and drift over the top of them, dropping small metal slugs and jigs all the way to the bottom and then erratically winding them at speed back up to the surface. The jig will get crunched on the way up , and once again a light drag is important to avoid lost fish, pulled hooks and busted lines. For this type of fishing, I mainly use small baitfish profiles of only 20-40 grams. These can also be cast long distances into feeding schools when you locate birds working the surface and the excitement of cranking in a metal slug as fast as you can to have it smashed on the way in and hear your reel screaming in protest is totally addictive. My personal choice for this type of fishing is an Okuma Salina 2 in 4000 size loaded with 20lb braid and maited to a 7'3 Raider 8-10 kilo spin stick which has proven capable and comfortable to use for this type of fishing. I like to keep the odd fish for the table and Spanish mackerel in particular are excellent table fare if bled upon capture and eaten fresh, but they keep all that well, so just keep what your likely to eat straight away. So, there are some basics, and hopefully this has been of some use to you in learning where and how to target these great fish.
romaincrisis
turnnoffyourmind
yousharknotpass
blakekathryn
gummygunk
jimmyeatworldofficial