Using jack mackerel for livebait p2t

Making bait

The ability to catch fresh bait can often turn the fortunes of a fishing trip right around. This is the second in the series on using 'maccas' for liviebait - read the first article here

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Mackerel are arguably the most versatile baitfish available to more northerly Kiwi fishers, attracting everything from modest-sized snapper to marlin weighing a hundred-plus kilos. That’s why jack mackerel kicked this series off.

However, not all mackerel are caught during the day, as was dealt with in the first instalment. Indeed, the dark hours often provide anglers on overnight and long-range recreational trips with valuable opportunities to fill live-bait tanks with wriggling baitfish, enabling much bigger and more worthwhile prey to be pursued during daylight hours.

However, to catch these night-time fish, you’ll need different tactics.

Setting up

Fortunately, most of the more northern coastal bays, inlets, coves and islands have populations of mackerel nearby, although you may need to deploy bright deck lights, specialist underwater baitfish lights and/or some berley to attract them to an anchored boat.

Which bait flies?

While ‘me old favourite’ pink shrimp/krill-type sabikis will generally produce bites right through to very murky twilight, after dark they can be less reliable, relying on bright deck-lights to extend their ability to catch right through the night.

Otherwise, I’ll change over to Black Magic ‘Midnight Mackerel’ flies when darkness falls, or whitebait-type imitation flies if I see lots of inanga swimming around with mackerel in pursuit.

When fishing un-baited flies at night, it becomes even more important to cover as much of the water column as possible, so use full strings of flies (six to eight flies) and continuously adjust your fishing depth until you get bites. Even then, the ‘best’ depth can change from minute to minute.

Un-baited flies

Same as daytime fishing, imparting the right fly action is important. Use a streamlined 1-2oz sinker to help create the quick rise-and-fall action that’s so crucial when working bait flies. To impart effective bait-fly actions, use small, short, sharp, stuttering movements with your wrist, accompanied by slow, sweeping, back-and-forth movements from your rod arm. You want to imitate the little swimming critters also attracted by the lights, so practice up near the surface to see how the flies react to your manipulations.

Night fishing for mackerel will be tough at times, so having a few tricks up your sleeve can cut sessions short by hours. It’s nice to get to bed before midnight when you’ve got a big day to come.

For example, sometimes mackerel are not visible, but are present deeper down. This often happens when the moon is full (diminishing the effectiveness of powerful ‘bait lights’) or predators are on the prowl. In such circumstances it can be better to turn off the bait-lights or fish in areas away from the brightest light. Take the trouble to regularly re-charge your flies’ beads’ luminous properties under a spotlight before dropping them down, as this can make a HUGE difference at times.

Another common scenario sees mackerel chasing and slashing after various organisms swimming around on the surface, but completely ignoring your offerings. When this happens, try removing the rig's sinker and ‘fly-lining’ for the mackerel, flipping the flies out with the rod and slowly trolling the ‘naked’ krill or whitebait imitations across the surface. This can be lethal occasionally, as is drifting a string of unweighted baited flies back in the berley. However, while this tactic works well at times, it can result in horrendous tangles, thanks to the hooked mackerel’s struggles whipping the unrestrained trailing flies around. That’s why just a single unweighted or very lightly weighted bait, allowed to drift naturally with the berley particles, can be more sensible and effective. I’ve also seen a light fly rod armed with a small smelt-type fly catch nearly all our baits on several occasions!

Baited flies

If the outside lights don’t seem to be doing the job, or perhaps the mackerel refuse to bite, your next option involves berley and bait.

First, tie the berley bag where it can be seen in the bright light of the cockpit or spotlight, and make sure a steady stream of goodies is flowing from it. Sometimes it takes hours for the berley and/or light to attract bait, so set up the berley and lights as soon as possible and don’t give up on them too quickly.

My favourite bait for mackerel at night, as it is for day-time mackerel fishing, is small, slim strips of skipjack belly or squid, cut so they’re easily inhaled. Skippy is less durable but holds its flavour well, while squid is tougher but its scent is quickly lost, diminishing its attraction. Both baits are reasonably visual though, and this can help when the mackerel are biting softly deeper down at the edge of the light-penetration limit. Keep your eyes peeled, and as soon as the pale shape of the bait winks out, strike quickly but not too hard.

When using baits, avoid imparting any movement because this generally causes the multiple baits to spin or move unnaturally, deterring the mackerel from feeding. Instead, simply hold your flies where the mackerel seem to be feeding and/or are holding, and wait for bites. This will often be near the origin of the berley trail, especially if the berley bag has recently been lifted and dropped to create more tidbits. Shaking the bag encourages mackerel to feed more competitively and with greater abandon, but don’t overfeed them, or they’ll soon depart with full bellies.

Caring for live bait

A lot of what ultimately happens when you’re fishing depends on the condition of your live baits, so look after them as well as possible. This starts with keeping handling to an absolute minimum, especially if mackerel are to be used on long-range trips. Any mishandling often develops into infections after a day or two, and then death. It therefore pays to use a wet cloth when unhooking mackerel or (much better) a proper de-hooker or butter-knife blade.

To unhook mackerel using the latter technique, hold the trace taut with one hand and, with the other hand, slide the back of the knife’s blade along the trace and the hook’s shank to its bend next to the mackerel’s mouth. Next, keeping the pressure on, take the trace hand downwards so the bend of the hook is pointing upwards and the mackerel is hanging straight down. Its own weight and a couple of gentle shakes will see the mackerel fall off into the live-bait tank or container.

Don’t overfill the tank with baits, as overcrowding results in sickness and death, and while around thirty mackerel should provide enough baits for a reasonable live-baiting session on a typical day, your live-bait tank volume may only allow 10-20 baits. Instead, it pays to keep any extra ones nice and fresh in a salt slurry so they can be converted into snapper or ’puka baits later on.

Try not to mix big live baits with small ones, unless they are of the same species. An adult kahawai can really stress smaller mackerel, knocking them around to the point they lose condition and can die prematurely. Don’t mess up lots of good small baits for the sake of one big one.

If you don’t have a proper bait tank on board, it’s possible to use a large bucket or container instead. Again, avoid keeping too many baits (aim for around two mackerel to every three litres of water), and try to change the water a few minutes after landing your baits for the day. Mackerel have a protective coating of body slime that can be removed – especially if poorly handled – and ends up drifting around in the water. This mucus can choke their gills if the water remains unchanged.

Your mackerel’s health should then be checked on every 15-20 minutes afterwards, or if there’s an obvious increase in splashing noises – a sure sign of oxygen deprivation. 

Other useful articles

Using jack mackerel for livebait Part 1

Next month: How to catch koheru and slimy mackerel.

   This article is reproduced with permission of   
New Zealand Fishing News

January 2015 - by Mark Kitteridge
Re-publishing elsewhere is prohibited

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