Spring Mackerel

The weather has settled down and the sunshine is warm…. Spring has arrived and with it the mackerel have moved inshore to chase shoals of sand eels. The plan was to have a session afloat to hopefully find a few mackerel to stock up the bait freezer for future fishing trips. Me, Kieren and his friend Dwyer headed to a mark on the Lizard Peninsula in search of the shoals. Kieren and Dwyer shared the Hobie Outfitter Tandem and I used the RTM Abaco. The forecast was great, the sea was glassy calm and the tide would be pushing.  All was looking well for catching mackerel.   

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We headed a few hundreds yards offshore and began to fish with tinsels. The odd fish was showing on the fish finder but eventually a patch of mackerel appeared beneath the kayaks and before long we were all hooked into some hard fighting mackerel. Admittedly Mackerel fight much much better when on a single hook and light line matched to an equally light rod and reel but we wanted to catch them in numbers to supply us with bait. Still the first set of 3 mackerel I hooked fought well on my Daiwa Powermesh 5-30g Lure Rod on braid with one of the mackerel being of a fair size and turned out to be the best of the trip weighing in at 1lb 5oz.

We drifted around for a couple of hours hitting the sparsely located shoals but when we found them we had some good sport. We ended the day with around 50 mackerel, 21 for myself and the rest between Kieren and Dwyer. We went for paddle around a mile down the coast and went exploring on a few secluded beaches and found a few lost fishing floats for our efforts. It was a lovely day to be on the water and we have finally managed to score some points for Kayak Wars….. spring has arrived and it wont be long before other summer species begin to arrive in numbers.

A few days later saw me return with my cousin. It was his first time kayak fishing and although the mackerel were thin on the ground we managed to catch a fair few between us. He enjoyed himself and I'm sure he will be wanting to go again!