Summer Mackerel.

On Thursday I headed of on the long walk to one of my Bass marks and characteristically lately had a rough session. Just as the Bass turned up to feed a couple of Jet bikers came along and even with the whole ocean to play in, they decided to donut right in front of me. They were making so much noise it was unbelievable and consequently scared the fish away.

They did eventually bugger off and seeing as I had walked for an hour or more I decided to tough it out. The fish did eventually show again and I could tell there was the odd decent fish among them but, you wouldn't believe what happened next! 5 Jet skiers turned up and scared them off again!

I was livid to say the least and decided to head home. I was almost two thirds of my way along the beach when I kind of got a consolation prize, the sea was erupting with Mackerel hitting baitfish.

I tried to get a few photo's, but they did not come out well. You can get an idea of the amount of bait present from this one though;

Armed with a 7 gram jig I caught a fair few fish! I did on occasion put bigger lures on to see if there was any Bass hitting the Mackerel, but they did not appear, strange!

Well I am not one to look a gift horse in the mouth and for the last two nights after work, I have been absolutely smashing the Mackerel with my light game gear! Fishing ultra light is the ultimate way to get the best out of Mackerel and it has been seriously good fun. It was nice just to fish for giggles, not being so serious about it all!

I have caught a serious amount of Mackerel and its been amazing watching them go ballistic for the tiny smelt with airborne acrobatics to boot, I have never seen anything quite like this on my local marks!

I caught pretty much all my fish over the past two nights, including a beastly Weever on a 7 gram ima Gun and a 4 gram Fish League Tiebo jig.

My friend Tim was out with me tonight and believe it or not he had never caught a Mackerel before! He started off with feathers, but I gave him one of my Yoshikawa jigs and before long he has caught his first Mackerel, happy days. I must have caught 50 plus fish over the last three nights and I am still a tad pumped! Call me a Mackie basher if you like, but at the end of the day they were caught on gear pretty much designed for this type of fishing, Mackerel are about the nearest thing I am going to get to Aji on my patch! It beats that feather nonsense hands down too.

I have kept a few of them for dinner and a few for bait, I have been wanting to do a bait session for a while, so this has set me up pretty well.

Oh just before I go, I'll leave you with a picture of a small piece of the aftermath that was strewn on the shoreline;

Till next time, tight lines!