Mackerel Reports '10 here......

fished ringaskiddy for a couple of hours was hoping to catch
some bass but ended up with 2 mackerel.

16 from a boat from bullock on the 18th sept

12 mackies for a couple hours work in the swilly this afternoon with few baitballs and mackerel jumping!! great to see as got the blood going!!

Sunday 25th out in the boat west of dunmore Most only 6 inch long, some about 12. consistently caught most drops throughout the day. from 400m out to 8 miles out.

Fished for a short while - there were mackerel breaking at the Deepwater Quay, but I only got one. I also caught a load of small herring or very large sprats, not sure which, although they were rough near the anal fin (which would make them pretty big sprats).

greenore full of them at last

Greystones

Macks caught about 1km outside harbour in the boat sunday 26/9 only 4 in hour and half. Other boats were the same.

Start of september was catching 40-60 in the same time period, same place.

Glenarm,

Mackerel caught off the beach at dusk.

Sunday 10th October
Mackerel still around the shore in North Clare. I had about a dozen in just over an hour on small black feathers. A good cast is needed as most of them seemto be staying 80-100 yards off shore.
Plenty of gannets still looking for them so the shoals must still be there.

fished galway dock for 2 hours loads of mack about

mackies were in dunmanus bay at the weekend

Are the mackerel still being caught at Greenore?

Any macks in Wicklow Pier? looking for some bait for a bit of night fishing this weekend..

Thanks

mackeral being caught off the pier in ballycotton this evening.....the hawk-eyes seem to be the only hooks to catch them on,not that plentiful but a few going

Anyone got any pictures/videos of the mackerel mania down in Galway?? Sounds mental..!

Was in Galway city last weekend with tghe family and headed down to the pier (as you do). I saw bait balls of sprats/small sardines being chased by mackerel. There were a number of bait balls both inside and outsude the breakwater and some were trapped up against the steps in the piers with the mackerel coming and attacking the bait ball for food. There were mackerel every where.There were Indians filling a bucket with the sprat - caught with a plastic bag and their hands by simply dumping it the water at the steps where the bait ball was trapped and pulling out a bag full . If you threw any kind of hook in the water you'd have caught mackerel - full houses on a regular basis by the few people who had feathers. Never seem anything like it in my life before - xcept on the tele.
Most surprising of all was that were so few people down there fishing.

Least surprising thing is that I hadn't a rod , a hook or even a pastic bag!

Was in Galway city last weekend with tghe family and headed down to the pier (as you do). I saw bait balls of sprats/small sardines being chased by mackerel. There were a number of bait balls both inside and outsude the breakwater and some were trapped up against the steps in the piers with the mackerel coming and attacking the bait ball for food. There were mackerel every where.There were Indians filling a bucket with the sprat - caught with a plastic bag and their hands by simply dumping it the water at the steps where the bait ball was trapped and pulling out a bag full . If you threw any kind of hook in the water you'd have caught mackerel - full houses on a regular basis by the few people who had feathers. Never seem anything like it in my life before - xcept on the tele.
Most surprising of all was that were so few people down there fishing.

Least surprising thing is that I hadn't a rod , a hook or even a pastic bag!

just reading on a blog about eating sprat...
>How to eat said sprats
Wash fish
Roll in seasoned flour
Fry fish until crisp
serve heaped on a meat dish
cut a loaf of new bread and butter
sit family around fire
eat sprats with fingers
throw heads and bones into fire.
Delicious tea ..only washing up ..frying pan and meat dish.
Satisfaction guaranteed<

sounds good....anyone tried it?

I've had em dipped in flour and deep fryed in spain, the heat makes the bones very soft and you can actually eat them, heads and all, if you fancy. Quite tasty.

Hi all,

Attached should be a graph of mackerel fishing counts as reported on this thread, by county. I couldn't find-out what counties Kisk, Shul, Slade, Reenmore, Enniscore, Bethra/Beathra Beach are in so they're down as '?' on the graph but if anyone knows.

Galway, Donegal and Clare were the best counties overall. The counts include reports of boat-caught and shore-caught mackerel. Most counties have distant marks e.g. Youghal and Dursey Sound, both in Co. Cork which fished differently. Antrim was the only county to report a mackerel every trip and Dublin caught the most in total. The first mackerel of the year was reported caught off Belmullet, Mayo in mid-April and the last off Ballycotton, Cork 22nd October.


All the best,

Will

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Thats very good work there Will, very interesting. Last year mackerel were very hard to get around here, Redbay, NE Antrim. A well known charter boat owner from here struggled to catch them for bait for fishing for larger species.

I went out 1 evening with 4 other fellas fishing close to Garron Pt, not far from the shore, 17 July. We caught mackerel for about 2.5 hours solid. I think we ended up with roughly 500 fish caught, not all kept, a freezer was filled and they are still being enjoyed by all, one of the fellas eats mackerel 3 or 4 times weekly.

We tried to get away from the mackerel by going off shore a couple of hundred yards more. Every drop there we all caught full lines of coley between 1.5lb and 3lb. Great sport, very few of the coley were kept. The ones that were kept were all stuffed with a nasty grey sludge, it was pouring out of them. One of the men in the party suggested that the coley were probably hanging around under the giant shoal of mackerel and eating their s***. I totally agree with him. If you saw the grey watery sludge that was running out of both ends of the coley, I mean there is nothing else it could have been. Maybe we're wrong, but surely there would be a bit of sustenance to be got from the waste of a mackerel if enough of it is available to eat The sludge was oily, made a slick on the surface, I dont know what else it could have been. I openned a few coleys up and their whole digestive system from throat to other end was stuffed with this gritty sludge.

It definitely wasnt salmon pellets from the farm about 2 mile from where we were fishing, I'm pretty familiar with that stuff, coley and mackerel to be caught in the vicinity of the farm are often stuffed with pellets, this grey stuff was completely different in colour and consistency.

Has anyone else seen the like of that when there are masses of mackerel about?

The charter boat owner was very dubious about my report of a lot of mackerel, but then again, he's dubious about everything when he's not involved!

Cheers.