8/21/2013

Smart Mackerel

One August afternoon, I went to State Pier. I thought there might be harbor blues at high tide. I packed some metal jigs, wire leaders and some mackerel jigs in my backpack. I also picked up a few bait mackerel from the freezer and put in a cooler box.

When I got to the pier, lots of people were fishing. A few locals caught nice mackerel. Some used float rig and others used just a two-hook drift rig. Lots of mini-size blue up to 8’’ were schooling and biting on bait casted. In the school of mini-blue, a few mackerel of 10-12’’ were swimming in shallow.

I casted a mackerel jig and traced from shallow to deep but mack didn’t even chase it. So I gave up and tied a hook at the end of fluorocarbon leader. I put a piece of mackerel on it and casted 40’ or so. As the bait sink, blue fish bit on and ran. I caught several blues and released. Meantime I caught a mackerel. Those who kept mack did the same thing, caught a mack during fishing tens of mini-blue.

Mack were completely visible. Even when a mack came across the bait on hook, it just passed by. It didn't mean they were not interested in the bait. Actually they did eat a small fragment of bait without hook. What was happening? I looked at them and found that mack distinguished bait without hook from the one with hook! When a mack found a piece of bait, it approached but didn’t bite on it immediately. After circling around a few times to confirm it was natural bait, it ate the bait. During circling around, mack looked like measuring the speed of sinking. If the bait was at almost the same depth, mack bit on it. If the bait went deeper, they just ignored. Mack were also waiting for blue tearing the bait. When bluefish bit on the bait on hook, mack followed them and ate safe fragment of bait blue tore. That was incredible for me but did happen. How smart they are!


In three hours of fishing, I managed to catch 4 mack and kept one relatively large bluefish. There are lots of mysteries at just off the pier.

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