Since Netting Ban, Spanish Mackerel Are so Plentiful

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. _ Fishing for Spanish mackerel has become an equal opportunity affair.

Anybody who can cast a lure into the water behind the boat can catch one.

“You take a 10-year-old kid and let him do this right here,” Richard Stanczyk said during a mackerel outing in Florida Bay, “and you’re liable to make him an addict.

“Where can you go with grandpa, the father and the kid where all three can participate?”

The generation gap wasn’t quite that wide on our trip, but everyone on Stanczyk’s boat had a blast catching mackerel.

Our group included Capt. Dave Peck, who runs a charter boat out of Oregon Inlet in North Carolina and comes to Bud N’ Mary’s Marina in Islamorada to visit Stanczyk during the winter; Andy Newman of Miami, who loves to catch mackerel more than just about any fish except dolphin; and Eric Brandon of Miami Lakes and Sue Cocking of Hollywood, my colleagues on the Weekly Fisherman presented by Boat Owners Warehouse radio show that airs Saturdays.

Fishing conditions didn’t appear to be all that good when we left Bud N’ Mary’s in Stanczyk’s 31-foot boat, as the wind was honking out of the east at more than 20 mph and most of the charter boats at the marina were still at the dock. But Stanczyk assured us that things would be fine in the backcountry. He was right.

We left the marina, cut toward the backcountry under one of the bridges that connects the chain of islands, then headed northwest to where Florida Bay meets up with the Gulf of Mexico. Despite the wind, seas were a foot or less and the 20-mile trip to a wreck that Stanczyk likes to fish was uneventful.

When we arrived, another boat was fishing where Stanczyk had wanted to fish, but he assured us that it didn’t matter.

Peck dropped the anchor a few hundred yards away from the other boat and put out a chum bag at each corner of the transom. Then we rigged up spinning rods with bucktail jigs and tipped the jigs with a live shrimp. It didn’t take long for the mackerel to show up.

While I tussled with baby mangrove snapper, Brandon and Cocking battled mackerel on their 6- and 8-pound spinning outfits. Newman cast a Clark spoon, his favorite mackerel lure, but the fish were more interested in the ]-ounce Hookup Lures bucktails with the shrimp.

As the chum slick extended farther behind the boat and attracted more fish, I finally got hooked up to a mackerel. The feisty fish tried to cross my companions’ lines, but we were able to move around at the back of the boat and avoid tangles. As I reeled the mackerel to the boat, Peck came over with a gaff and plucked the 4-pound fish from the water.

When the other boat left, Stanczyk had Peck pull the anchor and he moved the boat to his intended spot. The old adage You don’t leave fish to find fish crossed my mind, but Stanczyk knew exactly what he was doing.

Peck dropped the anchor in the spot, which was near a wreck where the water depth went from 9 feet to 12 feet. Minutes after the chum bags went in the water, mackerel started whacking our lures in the chum slick.

With the jigs and Newman’s spoon now catching fish, Stanczyk pulled out an 8-weight fly rod. After he landed a couple of mackerel, he handed the rod to me. I quickly learned that a long cast was not necessary.

I had stripped the fly to within 10 feet of the back of the boat when a mackerel slammed it and took off, the fly line piled on the deck wrapping around my legs. I was able to remove myself from the line, which didn’t get tangled, and land the fish. I reeled in most of the fly line and cast 15 feet behind the boat, which resulted in a second fish. Then I let my friends have a turn.

Newman gave up his spinning outfit with the spoon for the fly rod and promptly caught the biggest mackerel of the day, which weighed 6 pounds, 10 ounces.

After that, Newman picked up his camera and shot photos, and I picked up his spinning rod with the spoon. The mackerel were so fired up that they repeatedly smashed the spoon as I steadily retrieved it back to the boat. Meanwhile, Brandon caught mackerel on a bare Hookup jig with a shrimp.

We had lost count of the number of mackerel we’d caught a long time ago, but it was more than 50 and probably approached six dozen. (We filleted a bunch of the fish back at the marina, some of which I broiled and ate for dinner for the next couple of days and the rest of which Newman and I smoked.)

The action reminded Stanczyk, 62, of when he was growing up in Miami and fishing for mackerel in Biscayne Bay. He said the health of the fishery is due to the constitutional net ban amendment that took effect in 1995. Until then, mackerel were heavily netted and there were not many fish for recreational anglers to catch.

“I never thought in my lifetime that I’d come out here and see mackerel fishing like this,” Stanczyk said. “It’s as good as when I was a kid.”

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(c) 2007 South Florida Sun-Sentinel.

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