mackeral

[keithybaby]

gone are the days of the early 70s when you could catch over 40 fish in a 2 hour session on whitby peir.I used to meet a lad called john from sheffield every year for our summer hols and spent most of the week fishing.We fish bog hall for flatties and the south pier below the lighthouse for mackeral most were put back but the size of the fish were twice the size of what you catch now, unless they looked bigger as i was smaller those days. I fish most of the time in the berwick area and unless we are out in the boat fish are few these days.never mind thats me rant over back ta work

[dabcatcher]

in hartlepool we could get 40 or mare everyday right through the summer.

my rod was only 4ft long with 2 eyes and using those cheep ... tanner ... spinners you could catch fish all day opposite the ferry steps.

[mark chip]

lots less

Just ten years ago id see people catch up to 300 hundred mackeral each now the same people struggle to vatch 20 to 30 and sometimes none sadly a definate decline is clearly visible to even me in my short 35yrs of fishing roker pier

[LiamNE]

I have only been fishing about 15 years but last year was mackerel crazy I thought.

Up at the MOG that year I have never seen so many, 3s 4s and I even managed a 5 which I felt guilty pleasure in taking! There were a couple of Asian (Chinese??) blokes taking the **** and had bin bags full of them, no joke we are talking hundreds. The locals where lecturing them but the Asians where just blanking them!

[Kartonkel]

I have only been fishing about 15 years but last year was mackerel crazy I thought.

Up at the MOG that year I have never seen so many, 3s 4s and I even managed a 5 which I felt guilty pleasure in taking! There were a couple of Asian (Chinese??) blokes taking the **** and had bin bags full of them, no joke we are talking hundreds. The locals where lecturing them but the Asians where just blanking them!

Agree

the were only 2 problems last year

1. Very late arrival of the mackies (July !!)
2. Mucky water (they dont see the lures well enough)

On the odd day were we had clear water in August, I could have cought a thousand a day from my boat within 1/2 of the pier.

[hound hunter]

Very poor last yr dwn here,even the boats didn't get any numbers

[dabcatcher]

for just 2 days last year the whole bay in hartlepool was stuffed with mackerel feeding on the surface. i got lucky and just happened to be down there at first light both days.

in 2, 2 hour sessions i had enough for the barbi all summer and my winter bait stock.

i never needed to fish for them again.

[magpies]

I caught enough in an hour on SSP last June just on a spinning rod. Stopped at 50 for the freezer. I think I was just there on a day when they went mad.

[phill_itofish]

Here's a theory, and i'm by no means saying people shouldn't keep fish, i keep fish myself. And i am probably massively over simplifying this but check this out.

1 Mackerel can produce 90,000 eggs. Lets say 2% of them for argument sake survive to spawn again.

If you were to keep 300 fish, that would be 300 fish that cant spawn that year, that would be;

300 x (90,000) = 27,000,000 eggs that wont be produced in year one.

and

27,000,000 x 2% = 540,000 fish that wont spawn in year 3.

using the same maths, in year 3 those 540,000 fish could have produced 48,600,000,000 eggs thats 972,000,000 fish that could have made it to spawning age in year 5. If you follow this through to year 35 you end up with. 6,557,734,679,216,090,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, 000,000,000,000,000,000,000 fish that never lived because 300 fish were taken by one angler. Multiply this by the number of anglers and number of piers....

Now this isnt intended to have a pop at anyone keeping loads of fish, like i said to start with, i keep fish myself and im sure there's massive holes in my logic but an interesting thought while your having your lunch time cuppa.

[endurothumpers]

Thing is isn't there these state of the art trawlers now that net hundreds of tons of mackerel in one go?How can that be sustained ????

[phill_itofish]

Thing is isn't there these state of the art trawlers now that net hundreds of tons of mackerel in one go?How can that be sustained ????

IMHO it simply can't, look at what we did to the herring and cod stocks