Captain’s Corner for August 3 Dave Zalewski

Spanish mackerel fishing offshore in the gulf throughout the summer has been relatively so and hit or miss. All this changed dramatically last week with an invasion of the spotted speedsters on all of the near shore artificial reefs such as that lie 5 to 7 miles offshore. Trolling 2 lines equipped with #1 planers or trolling sinkers 10 feet from a 00 or 0 spoon produced numerous double headers on all of the days we fished for mackerel. The action continued even after we switched to just a small spoon fished on light spinning tackle fished right on the surface to provide more sport for the anglers.
Tackle:
Because of the force exerted by a #1 planer minimum tackle must be at least 20 pound test with a rod that has a fast tip with some strength in the body. Use of a trolling sinker allows one to downsize tackle to 10 to 12 pound class. Live bait anglers can reduce tackle down to 6 to 8 pound class if desired. The baitfish that the mackerel have been feeding on are very small which necessitates the use of the very small spoons, jigs or small streamer flies. Even live bait users ( which is usually a sure thing) have run into problems with large baits netted inshore which the mackerel ignore because they are feeding on the small fry baits.
Tip:
These reefs are 2000 feet long and have barges , military tanks and piles of concrete rubble scattered throughout them . The bait is concentrated on the structure, which attracts the fish. Using the MOB button on your GPS in the highway mode allows you to return to that piece of structure repeatedly while trolling.