Our expert for August is Captain Larry Geipe of Chasing Light Charters. Since summer has set in, our conversation focuses on catching Spanish mackerel on light tackle.
Q: What's your favorite gear to use for Spanish mackerel?
A: My favorite mackerel rig starts with a Backyard Custom 6’8” medium fast action MHX saltwater rod. A high retrieval speed spinning reel is critical and I like the PENN Battle III 4000HS, which returns 43” of line per crank. The most important thing with Spanish mackerel is retrieval speed and if your reel doesn’t have a high ratio, it will greatly reduce your chances of success. I spool my reels with 15-pound high visibility braided line and use a three-foot leader of 20-pound Ande mono leader connected to the braid via an FG knot.
Q: What's your favorite lure?
A: My personal all-time favorite lure is the one-ounce RealImage Jigging Spoon in Chartreuse Shad, fitted with a 1/0 VMC inline hook. There are many great mackerel lures out there, but in my experience, nothing has beaten the RealImage. In general, you can’t go wrong with any metal minnow profile in the one-ounce range.
Q: Do you have any tricks for finding the fish, beyond just looking for birds?
A: When casting for macs, your best friends are schools of smaller snapper bluefish working over rain minnows and other small minnow-sized baits. My theory is that snapper blues appear in larger numbers and help to round up and condense the bait into denser balls. Another possibility is that these small blues create a natural chum slick that the mackerel home in on. Chumming for Spanish mackerel is actually very popular in southern states like Florida, and it stands to reason that more scent in the water will attract more fish. In any case, I have observed that when snapper blues are not present, the bait and macs tend to spread out over a wider area and casting opportunities may dwindle. When this happens, trollers tend to have better success than light tackle anglers.
Q: Okay, you’re coming up on the hot zone and your clients are getting ready to cast. What do you tell them?
A: If macs have been spotted and are popping up on the surface, I tell my crew to hold their rods at the ready with their fingers on the trigger and to wait. I’ve caught more mackerel waiting to see them than I have blind casting for them. When macs break the surface they are typically not there for long, and if you’re stuck reeling in your last cast, chances are they will vanish before you have time to reset. When you see them break the surface, make your cast to place your lure ahead of them and, as much as possible, going in the same direction they are headed. Allow a two- to three-second countdown for the lure to sink then rip it back at maximum speed. Think of it like merging onto I-95 during rush hour; you want to join the flow of traffic at a matched speed, and not cut across it at a slow speed.
When there’s nothing happening on the surface, it’s time to blind cast and to include working the deeper parts of the water column. One of my favorite techniques is to let the lure completely sink to the bottom and let it sit for a second before cranking it back with a massive sweep of the rod tip. This technique has produced some of my largest Spanish macs.
Q: Are there any common things you see people do when trying to catch Spanish mackerel that you’d advise against?
A: The biggest thing I’d advise against is becoming disappointed if you don’t fill the box with your limit. If your goal is meat for the table, you might be better off trolling.
Q: Hit us with any tip you might have that hasn’t come up already.
A: Spanish mackerel have small boney mouths and are very prone to spitting the hook. I’ve found that the catch ratio is pretty much the same whether I’m using treble hooks or a single hook. However, net hangups and unhooking times are vastly higher when using treble hooks and the last thing you want to be doing when the action is hot is wasting time fumbling around with treble hooks.
Thank you, Captain Larry!