Mackerel

[northeast1]

Looking back through my 27 years of boating records I expected to see this year as being the worst for mackerel hat I had recorded but it was not, I have years when the mackerel never came in large numbers until mid July.

The lack of bait fish has really hit my fishing this year, even calling off a Graveyard trip due to the lack of fresh bait.

Now with a 2 day sharking trip coming up in 5 days time, we have no mackerel frozen or fresh to take down and require about 60.

This Friday weather willing is the last chance for me to catch mackerel but not expecting many unless we hit that lucky shoal.

[philb]

Mackerel

Hi loads of Mackerel off Seaham , fishing on Mon couldn't get to the bottom for them , so hopefully you can fill up Friday.

[Juliogeordio]

I've been out twice in the last few weeks and couldn't get through the mackerel on boats out of the Tyne. There are loads of them!

[northeast1]

You must be the only one, they turned up a few weeks ago then vanished and every boat struggled that I know of until the last couple of days when they have shown again.

we have 25 so getting there but due to weather shark trip looks to be off anyway, be 3rd time unlucky, risk you take fishing 25-30 miles in open water with no land mass on 2 out the 4 directions for 1000s of miles

[Wasabi]

Surprised to read your post, Richie...

I had a call bei Eddie last week about the problem, unfortunately my boat was out of order.

I have to agree with the other posters....the mackerels are plentiful and some very big...indeed I gave 25 to Eddie yesterday and I thought that was more than enough...if I would have known you need 80,I could have fished 1/2 hour longer for them, they came up in full houses....but I was after wreck cod and ling and had only 3 hours before work, so I headed further out.

Where I do agree is, that they are very patchy and I tend to actively find them...looking at bird activity etc. I also have my favourite marks (which I use with the kiddies for mackerels) and I seem to always find a big number of mackerels somewhere.

This year the best amount seems at the 4 mile range over large wrecks downtide of it.

We catch mackerel in good numbers every time we fished since the end of may.