Mining fall mackerel – Find the right depth to troll your spoons and you’ll harvest more Spanish mackerel in the waters off Carolina Beach

Doubleheader Spanish on a mackerel tree rig is not an unsual sight in the fall in the waters off Carolina Beach and Wrightsville Beach.

Placing baits at different depths with planers, trolling sinkers will help hone in on feeding mackerel.

Once he cleared the sandbars outside Carolina Beach Inlet, Rennie Clark turned his boat to the south, and with the rising sun over his shoulder, he began rolling over the small swells headed down the beach towards Fort Fisher, smiling and talking but keeping watch for bait, birds or other signs of fish on the surface and his fish finder.

Clark, who operates Tournament Trail Charters in Carolina Beach, had been catching some nice Spanish mackerel down the beach a few miles, and he expected them to still be there and feeding.

“That might be them right there,” Clark said, pointing to a few gulls hovering low over the water and diving intermittently. “When the Spanish push bait up off the bottom, the birds see it and move in to feed. There will be some baits pushed all the way to the top, plus some injured baits struggling to swim, and the birds will have a feast. I think pretty soon we’ll be thanking them for helping us find the fish.”

Once near the birds, Clark set out several lines behind the boat, trolling two mackerel tree rigs and Clark Spoons behind No. 1 planers and one mackerel tree rig behind a 2-ounce trolling sinker. The planer lines were the shortest and were staggered to be at different distances and different depths behind the boat to help locate fish and prevent lines from tangling. The line with the trolling sinker was the longest and was barely below the surface.

“This is how I start each fishing trip,” Clark said. “With this setup, I have lines at three different depths and at different distances behind the boat. Most days, the fish will prefer one of the lines better, and once I see a majority of the strikes are coming from one of the lines, I change the spread to get another line at that same depth and distance from the boat. Some days the Spanish are feeding shallow, and some days they are feeding deeper, and this spread lets me find that out.”

Almost on cue, the deeper planer rod bent deeply, jerked back upright and then pulled down again. Clark slowed the boat a little, picked up the rod and began reeling. In a few seconds, a fish splashed behind the boat, and Clark said it was a mackerel. When the planer was almost at the rod tip, he slipped the rod into a holder and hand-lined the fish the rest of the way in and flipped it into the livewell.

Clark pinned the squirming fish with the lid, popped the hook free, flipped the rig back over the side and picked up the rod to let line out and reposition the rig. As soon as the bait was in lace, the rod bucked again and bent over. This time, the fish was a little bigger, and when it was safely in the boat, Clark lifted the dorsal fin to make sure it wasn’t an undersized king.

“That one was large enough I had to check and be sure it wasn’t a king,” said Clark, explaining that all Spanish have a black spot on the leading edge of their forward dorsal, while a king’s fin is uniformly gray. “They sometimes mix with schools of Spanish, and it can be difficult to tell the difference.”

Clark reset the line and made a large arcing turn to make another pass where he had just been. He said if the school of Spanish was on top, he could see them to circle around and let the lures pull through the school without running the boat through the feeding fish and spooking them.

Clark marked a blob of bait suspended in the water column and was decided it was a school that hadn’t pushed the bait to the surface yet. He made a pass back over his first spot, drawing two more strikes, one of the deep planer line and one on the shallow planer line. It was a sign, Clark said, that baitfish were rising, but he didn’t mark them that pass. Another pass along the same course produced two strikes on the shallow planer line, and Clark shortened the deeper planer line to move it shallower.

That school of fish never made it to the surface, but the fish continued to bite. Most of the strikes came on the lines with planers, but a few moved high enough in the water they hit the shallow line with the trolling sinker.

“When the water cools just a little more, these fish will be aggressive enough they’ll chase the bait to the surface and we can see them feeding,” Clark said. “Depending on how long the water stays warm, that can begin later in September or maybe in October. These are plenty of fun to catch and are definitely willing biters, but there is something about catching them while you are watching a feeding frenzy.

“When the Spanish get wild and are feeding with abandon, we often troll until we find a school and stop and cast to them,” Clark said. “It’s much easier, more fun and there are less tangled lines. They aren’t as spooky, either, and they stay up longer. They’re focused on the bait and feeding, and you don’t bother them unless you make a loud noise or something. Just like while trolling, a big part of catching Spanish while casting is matching your lure to the size of the bait they are eating. Once you figure that out, if you rip it through them, they’ll eat it.

“Flashy jigs in the right size retrieved very quickly is the key to catching aggressive fall Spanish when casting,” Clark said. “I like the Crippled Herring jigs from Luhr-Jensen and fish them with the single hook, not the treble. I might miss a few fish, but the single hook is easier to remove than the treble, and that’s especially important if you catch a fish you don’t plan to keep. I also like the Gomame 25-gram and Gomoku 20-gram jigs from Williamson.”

These Spanish never came to the surface so Clark continued trolling. They were nice-sized Spanish, averaging several pounds apiece. Clark said they were probably some of the smaller Spanish that had come through during the spring and had been eating all summer.

DESTINATION INFORMATION

HOW TO GET THERE — The best access to Carolina Beach from most of North Carolina is by I-40 to Wilmington, then US 421 to Carolina Beach. Three public boat ramps serve the area: one a quarter-mile north of the US 421 bridge over Snow’s Cut,  a fee ramp at Carolina Beach State Park that accesses the ICW, and a ramp at Federal Point at the end of US 421 at Fort Fisher.

WHEN TO GO — Spanish mackerel usually arrive in the nearshore waters off Carolina Beach and Wrightsville Beach in late April or May, and they stay until well into the fall. Their appetites really fire up with the influx of mullet minnows in the fall.

BEST TECHNIQUES — To handle the stress of trolling with planers, go with a heavy, 6 1/2-foot rod mated with a Shimano Charter Special 2000 reels spooled with 30- to 60-pound mono. Leaders behind the planers are mono or fluorocarbon. No. 00 and 0 Clark Spoons are commonly used, but in the fall, with larger baitfish around, a No. 1 will also work. A mackerel tree is another productive rig with several pieces of colorful surgical tubing and trailing Clark Spoons.

FISHING INFO/GUIDES — Rennie Clark, Tournament Trail Charters, 910-465-8943, www.tournamenttrailcharters.com; Island Tackle and Hardware, 910-458-3049, www.islandtacklehardware.com).  See also Guides and Charters in Classifieds.

ACCOMMODATIONS — MainStay Suites, Wilmington, 910-392-1741, www.mainstaywilmingtonnc.com; Sleep Inn, Wilmington, 910-313-6665, www.sleepinwilmingtonnc.com; Cape Fear Convention and Visitors Bureau, 877-406-2356, www.wilmingtonandbeaches.com.

MAPS — Capt. Segull’s Nautical Charts, 888-473-4855, www.captainsegullcharts.com; Sealake Fishing Guides, 800-411-0185, www.thegoodspots.com; GMCO’s Chartbook of North Carolina, 888-420-6277, www.gmcomaps.com; Maps Unique, 910-458-9923, www.offshore-fishing-map.com; The Grease Chart, 252-560-6527, www.greasechart.com.

About Jerry Dilsaver 1168 Articles
Jerry Dilsaver of Oak Island, N.C., a full-time freelance writer, is a columnist for Carolina Sportsman. He is a former SKA National Champion and USAA Angler of the Year.

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