Fishing Australia

Spanish Mackerel are right up there as one of my all time favourite saltwater species. They’re a big strong and incredibly fast fish that look awesome, and are brilliant on the dinner plate to boot!

Their scientific name is Scomberomorus commerson, but they are also known in our country as a narrow barred Spanish mackerel, blue mackerel, seer fish, or just plain Mackerel or Spaniard.

They’re easily recognizable and represent a prize catch in the tropical and sub tropical waterways they inhabit around the world, including in the USA where they are often called ‘kingfish’.

WHEN AND WHERE

In Australia the Spanish Mackerel's strong hold is in the top half of the continent.

They can be found in water temperatures from roughly 20 degrees Celsius right up to 30 degrees Celcius or more, but definitely prefer somewhere between the 24 and 28 degree mark.

When warm currents push south in summer ‘Macky’ anglers in areas at the southern parts of their range like Coffs Harbour on the east coast and Geraldton on the west coast eagerly await their arrival.

The occasional school will venture as far down as Mandurah on the west coast and Bermagui on the east coast when strong summer currents penetrate their furthest south.

Their return migration in winter is more pronounced and just as eagerly awaited by anglers in Tropical North Queensland, Northern WA and the NT. When the migrating mass arrives in these areas each season they are a reasonably reliable catch.

My brother Darren was the first of my clan to catch one while on an old wooden charter boat out of Green Island in Cairns. This was way back in the days when I could hardly see over the side of the boat!

I clearly recall the adults frantically trying to stop us getting caught up in the hand line as loose coils flurried off the deck at a frightening speed.

I have had a healthy respect and fascination in these fish ever since and went on to have the privilege of fishing with some brilliant ‘mackerel’ skippers around the country. In this time I have noticed some definite patterns as to where they prefer to hang out.

PREFFERED HAUNTS

Once the Spanish Mackerel arrive in an area they can be found around reefs, wrecks, drop offs, headlands, islands and pinnacles. But importantly, if the current is running they are most often found on the up current side of these structures.

In fact one of the real tricks to finding them at for example is too look for ‘pressure points’.

This effectively means motoring around and seeing which way the current is flowing over known mackerel structures. The pressure point is the part of the structure that faces the current and creates an underwater ‘bow wave’ that the mackerel ‘surf on’. From here they duck out to intercept food as it flows past.

Like all fish though there are exceptions and sometimes large flat areas amongst the main coral reefs can also be productive if the mackerel have had a chance to ball up baitfish in their travels. There is stacks of examples of this throughout the great barrier reef.

Some skippers like to troll between the pressure points looking for the bait balls and at times are handsomely rewarded with a feeding school of macks. Using a sounder or scanning the sea for bait and working birds is a must whenever looking for mackerel.

In the northern parts of WA the local pro mackerel fishos target ‘mackerel lumps’, which are effectively underwater mounds surrounded by vast areas of relatively flat sea beds. These areas disturb the main current and suck in bait fish and mackerel as they migrate along the coast.

When these areas have been unfished for long periods the mackerel fishing can be brilliant, and they will attack everything and anything that moves past like it is trying to escape.

One time they bit all our lures off and then chased the wake the end of the line was making, snipping at it until they nearly hit the boat! So we tied on poppers and hooked in, some mackerel got 5 meters of air as they smashed the surface lure from below!

Some of the ex commercial mackerel fisho’s I have spent time with in these areas will only make one troll past a lump and if all the rods don’t go off their patience has already worn thin and they steam off to the next spot!

This is a good strategy in some remote hot spots right around the top half of Australia. However when you’re fishing closer to large towns with more fishing pressure or you are limited to where you can get due to winds you simply have to fine tune your techniques so you can catch the smaller numbers of smarter fish. And that’s exactly what I’ll be looking into next week.

See you on the water.

Rob Paxevanos.