A feed of freshly fried mackerel and new spuds

FOR their size, mackerel are the prime fighting fish that send shivers down your back when you hook four, five or six on feathered hooks, writes Tom Gillespie.

Mackerel feathering couldn’t be easier. You simply attach a pre-tied string of feathers (costing around €2 to €4) to the line from your rod, preferably with a quick release swivel, and add a lead weight at the end and you’re set to go.

I prefer to fish from a boat but you can do so from a pier or a rock outcrop. Drop the feathers overboard and let them go to the bottom, controlling the line release with your thumb on the line on the reel.

If mackerel are there you will hit them on the way down. You will feel the tug as they greedily go for the feathers.

If not you jig the feathers by pumping the rod up and down and repeat. If I hit nothing here I will wind up the line in the hope of hitting a shoal.

You’ll know when the mackerel are on – everything suddenly goes solid and then it’s simply a question of pumping them in.

A full string of mackerel will certainly give you a decent scrap and it is not unusual to lose one or two as you lift them aboard.

Then you have the task of unhooking them, that is if you haven’t a skipper who will do it for you.

Now this is an important tip. Grab the fish and quickly turn it to ensure its back is facing you. Otherwise when you pull the hook out you will get the full squirt from its abdomen and the stink on your clothes the following day is not pretty.

Of course, if there is someone on the boat you prefer wasn’t there aim the mackerel squirt at them.

Once you hit a shoal it is hard to stop hauling them in but it is prudent to discuss with your fellow anglers just how many mackerel you actually want to catch.

If unhooked carefully they can be released and it is a pleasure to watch them, bullet-like, hit for the bottom.

Now that you have the mackerel on board you need a skipper like Darragh McGee, who operates the Whitewater II in Clew Bay out of Newport, to do the rest.

Darragh fillets the mackerel as his pan is heating up in the galley and the silver fillets are cooked within minutes of having been caught (see photograph). You will never taste anything like them and you will be licking your fingers as the next batch are cooking.

To accompany the mackerel, Darragh cooks new potatoes, when available, in salt water, tips them onto a plate with real Irish butter and you have to be quick to grab some as they vanish in seconds.

There is nothing like the fresh sea air to give you an appetite and what better way to satisfy it than with a cup of tea or coffee, a la Darragh.

Last month a huge 165 lb. female skate was landed and released on Darragh’s boat, making it a fitting start to the new angling season.

Last May, Kevin McGreevy caught a massive 208 lb. female skate while fishing on the Whitewater II.

Later last year Darragh had another skate for over 100 lbs. as well as a 20-foot long conger eel which he caught while fishing off the pier on Clare Island while his angling clients popped in for a pint in the local community centre.

When I first went sea fishing out of Westport on Clew Bay, nearly half a century ago, the norm was that the heaviest bag of fish won the day. For this, each angler was given a strong plastic bag into which you dumped your catch, regardless of species or size. At the end of the day the bags were weighed to determine the winner.

Then, regrettably, the contents were dumped back into the tide to feed the crabs and seagulls.

Specimen fish were weighed and their remains were left hanging at the harbour until the smell forced them to be removed.

Later a points system was introduced and then a catch-and-return system, which still operates to this day.

However, the helicon days of huge specimen catches are gone. But, thankfully, skate numbers seem to be returning.

There are plenty of coalfish, pollock, skad, wrasse (both ballan and cuckoo), gurnard (red and grey), sand eels and the occasional garfish still in these waters.

Bottom fishing will deliver dogfish by the dozen, but be careful how you handle them as their skin is like sandpaper and you don’t want them to come in contact with your hand or wrist. If they did you will have a painful bruise the following day. The secret is to hold the head and tail together as you extract the hook before returning them to the deep.

You can also get bull huss, conger, ray, spur dog and ling while further out the bay there are shark, John Dory, squid, tope, cod and octopus.

I am well used to fishing out of Newport. For maybe 10 years I organised the annual West of Ireland National Union of Journalists deep sea fishing competition there with the assistance of Tom and Bella Moran and Eddie Gibbons. Prior to that we fished out of Westport and laterally from Inishturk. After 35 years the competition was abandoned but each year I still have to have several outings from either Newport, Killala, Achill or Ballyglass outside Belmullet.

 

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