Catching and Preparing Spanish Mackerel for Marlin Fishing
Fishing for Spanish mackerel is simple once you locate one of their large schools. Slow-troll or cast small spoons, plugs, nylon or feather jigs for nearly foolproof action because Spanish mackerel like to gather in groups. Bring plenty of replacement tails. Soft rubber minnows or curly-tail grubs fished on lead jig heads also work well. A mackerel’s sharp teeth quickly annihilate rubber lures or skirts. In a pinch, it works amazingly well to thread a few beads on a short piece of wire before a bare hook.
Ask them before you go because most tackle shops are aware of where the Spanish mackerel schools are in the area. When you arrive at the suggested location, look for the fleet of boats that will undoubtedly be servicing the school. Slowly and quietly approach the mackerel fleet, taking care not to stray or enter another boat’s circle. Anglers catch their limits of Spanish by turning continuously and circling the location of their most recent bite. Using a GPS plotter with the track line enabled will help you stay focused and respect other people’s space. Advertisement.
For catching Spanish mackerel, drifting and chumming with tiny glass minnows is also very effective. Small, shiny spoons, jigs, or flies work well, and Spanish make spirited fights with blazing, high-speed runs when fished with trout-weight fly rods or panfish-size spinning gear. They are excellent light-tackle game fish that will excite children in the family. While Dad must meet his bait needs before any go on the grill, Spanish mackerel make excellent table fare when eaten fresh.
Several businesses focus on catching and preparing Spanish mackerel for dead bait trolling rigs, even though you can easily catch your own. But from one store to the next, the quality of frozen mackerel bait varies greatly. A properly constructed mackerel rig can be trolled for several hours without washing out, and it won’t disintegrate under a blue marlin’s vicious strike to ruin a potential hookup. If you discover a store that consistently gives you top-notch mackerel baits, stick with them. Their bait may cost a little more, but it will be worthwhile in the long run.
You should always have a second cooler with crushed ice with you when you go mackerel fishing. Add a couple of pounds of salt, a cup of baking soda, a capful of formalin solution (formaldehyde gas in aqueous solution), and a big bucket of seawater as soon as you catch your first Spanish. Advertisement.
Once the mackerel is dead, remove the entrails and rinse out the body cavity. Do not keep the fish longer than necessary on the deck, in the sun, or in a livewell filled with warm water. Potential baits must be placed into the cold brine almost immediately because bacterial activity doubles with every 18-degree increase in temperature.
The mackerel is quickly chilled by this homemade brine to the freezing point of salt water. The core temperature of the baits is lowered in a fraction of the time it would take in an air-filled freezer because water conducts heat much better than air. One of the best-kept secrets in the bait industry is to pre-chill any type of baitfish to almost freezing before putting them in the freezer.
The baking soda helps preserve the fish’s live-color patterns. Anytime you see frozen baits that still have all of their color, you can bet that they were immediately immersed in a brine/baking soda solution after being caught. Advertisement.
The mackerel’s flexibility won’t be significantly altered by one capful of formalin in 20 gallons of seawater, but it will prevent the bacterial activity that softens thawed bait. An excessive amount of formalin may cause too many proteins to coagulate, giving the mackerel a mackerel shape but a consistency more akin to shoe leather. Under the influence of the formalin juice, the once-living thing changes into a fish-shaped lure. Even though it’s nearly impossible to make an overly jacked mackerel swim, it makes a decent skip bait that will splash, flop, and frequently rotate behind the boat for several hours or even days without washing out. Such specimens make popular high-speed mackerel baits for blue marlin.
Frozen baits outperform freshly caught and rigged ones after being immersed in ice-cold brine containing either formalin or another strong bactericide. It’s all in the handling!.
How to Rig Mackerel for Marlin
Anyone can hook a marlin by running a leader through a lure, crimping on a hook, and dragging the line at 8 knots. But in order to consistently catch billfish using dead natural baits, you need both angling and bait-rigging skills. The ability to rig mackerel for trolling is a skill that is getting harder and harder to find among anglers and crew these days.
Having said that, if you understand a few fundamental concepts, a Spanish mackerel is among the simplest fish to rig. First, always take out any baitfish’s eyes. They eventually “bug out,” causing the bait to stop functioning properly, if you don’t remove them before rigging the bait. In order to get rid of the protruding eyeballs, you will now still need to bring in the bait and waste valuable fishing time. Get the eyes out before rigging the bait because it is much better and more professional to do so.
However, ensuring that your baits exhibit what scientists refer to as “bilateral symmetry” is the real secret to success. Most partners will simply advise you to pull straight down from the top of the animal’s head. The same principle holds true whether you rig your mackerel on mono, cable, or wire or whether you place the hook in the body cavity or on top of the head. When looking down the fish’s back, the pulling point must precisely run down the middle of the bait’s body.
The action of trolled mackerel baits also depends on where you place the pulling point in relation to the fish’s nose. Our largest baits are frequently removed from the very tip of the bait’s nose in Cairns. This usually lifts the bait’s head so it slithers or flaps along the surface instead of digging down and attempting to swim A 20-pound Australian scaly mackerel or a narrow-banded Spanish mackerel is nearly impossible to keep swimming from an outrigger clip in choppy waters because the water resistance creates too much drag.
Additionally, you want the angler to see the bait so he can watch the billfish consume it. This increases the likelihood of a hookup when using a Spanish mackerel to bait and switch a billfish raised to a teaser. Keeping the bait on the surface makes this much easier. To keep the bait visible and on the surface, pull head-rigged mackerel with J- or circle hooks sewn on the top of the head and close to the tip of the nose.
How to Rig Mackerel Baits in the Head
A mackerel, or any other natural bait for that matter, can be head-rigged in a number of different ways. Keep the hook dead center or the bait will spin and not swim straight, which is another requirement that is common. This is incredibly important when rigging mackerel for trolling.
A tried-and-true technique for dead bait trolling begins by wrapping two tag ends of waxed nylon rigging twine (which can also be used) around the bend of the hook with three half hitsches (a clove hitch and an additional half hitch) of 130-pound Dacron. Twine has the tendency to cut through the bait and may also loosen up.
Pull one tag end at a time through the fish’s head and out of the lower jaw using a bait needle with one eye closed. Place the eye of the hook forward, past the fish’s nose, and place it next to the bait. Select a tag end that comes off the hook and insert it slightly off-center into the head on the same side that the tag end comes from the hook. Do not attempt to penetrate the skull’s exact center. The mackerel’s skull has a small bone that runs down the middle that causes the needle to veer slightly to one side. In order to keep the fish’s mouth closed and ensure that the hook is positioned exactly dead center on top of the head, each tag end should be threaded slightly off center before being tied tightly together under the fish’s mouth.
For skip baits, the hook should be close to the nose, and for swimming baits, it should be placed directly above the front of the eyes. Waxed twine should be used to close the fish’s mouth and gill plates, attach the head to the body, and seal the body cavity.
In one variation of this rig, the Dacron line is tightly wound with waxed thread to form a bushing between the hook and the mackerel’s head. Tie a knot at the end of the wrap to prevent the twine from unraveling. In any case, a sizable portion of head-rigged baits lose their effectiveness when one of the rigging lines becomes loosened or rips through the head, pulling the hook a little to one side. Maintaining bilateral symmetry is necessary to prevent the bait from spinning.
The Dacron or waxed twine can also be inserted through the eye sockets of the bait to secure the hook to its head. However, a loop of Dacron through the eyes will self-center under pressure, and baits rigged in this way typically swim well. Its mouth, gills, and body cavity must still be stitched up with twine. Avoid leaving a connecting loop in the Dacron that is too large to prevent the hook from fouling the bait while it is being trotted or when a marlin attacks.
FAQ
How do you use mackerel as bait?
Mackerel is a preferred option for using in cocktail baits. One of the most popular applications is to tip off a ragworm or lugworm bait with a small piece of mackerel. It is frequently more successful to use a worm bait in conjunction with the extra scent provided by the oily mackerel than to use a worm bait alone.
How do you rig mackerel for swimming baits?
When free-lining for kingfish and cero mackerel, a 4 or 6 VMC 9226 BN treble hook through the back just behind the gills causes the ballyhoo to swim away but remain on the surface.
