The Making of Maine Mackerel Trees.

Mackerel Fishing in Maine.

For some years now I have been chasing the mackerel around Maine from the piers in Portland to the bottom of Saco bay and through Biddeford pool. Along the way and over the years I have learned a number of things about the Mackerel here in Maine, what works, what doesn’t, their behavior and what’s eating them. They are such an important food source to big predatory fish here in Maine, I thought it was time that they deserved their own page.

In Maine the first of the migratory fish to show up in May are the mackerel. This is the best time to stock up the bait freezer and get ready for the summer run of Stripers and Blue fish. Early Striped bass in Maine rely on the mackerel in the spring as a major food source. Later in the season they will start hunting worms, pogys, herring and other bait fish. The Mackerel in the spring though, offer a big meal for tired migrating stripers.

Not only are the Mackerel good for bait, but they make some delicious grilled dinners and New England style chowders. Mackerel are high in Omega 3 oils, proteins, and have a strong fishy flavor. There are a number of ways to prepare Mackerel, and have shown up in star dishes by such renown cooks as the great Chef Ramsay, and others. They will all tell you the best, and only way, to prepare these fish is fresh….. and nothing gets fresher than straight from the waters of Maine for dinner the same evening.

The techniques for successfully catching Mackerel are almost as varied as the people who fish for them. Below I will highlight the three most popular methods, and what we have done here at The Fishin’ Hole to combine them and drastically improve our catches. We literally fill our freezer every year for bait, and cookouts. Most of this action is in the spring, but Macks tend to stick in the bay for the whole summer and can be caught anytime during tourist season and beyond.

Mackerel behavoir:
Hunting and feeding – Whats in their bellies

Mackerel are a carnivorous lot and fishermen should take advantage of this. Silversides are a tasty treat for Mackerel and many can be found along pier pilings, or breakwaters in Maine.  To find out where the Mackerel are, you will usually look for the little silversides flipping out of the water frantically. This usually means that there is something under them gathering them up and picking them off.  Typically this is Mackerel. While stripers and blue fish also enjoy these little treats, they have to expend a lot of energy for such a little bite. This is why the Stripers and blues are hunting the Mackerel, and Mackerel are hunting silversides. It all comes down to size. Same energy expended, but a bigger return for the bigger fish. Also once the striped bass see mackerel running, they will all but ignore other offerings. The exception to this is sand worms. Sand worms seem to be a treat stripers hate to turn down regardless of what other fish are in the water.

Terns and seagulls are also watching for this silversides surface action and will frequently take advantage of the Mackerel or other predatory fish forcing these little silver guys to the surface. Casting to diving terns will have about a 50/50 success rate. Terns are diving birds and will plunge as much as 12 or more feet into the water to catch the silversides. This means there may or may not be predatory Mackerel schooling them up. The terns can see down into the water and may just be diving into a free swimming school. However Seagulls landing and scooping up the leftovers or flipping fish is a pretty sure bet that something is forcing the fish up. When the gulls land the silversides are weighing out the threat of a few birds or the school of fish darting in and out picking them off.
                Other than silversides, Mackerel enjoy Shrimp, and other copepods or small bait fish in the water. Anything meaty, moving, or swimming that might fit in their mouth is at risk. Mackerel, unlike other predatory fish, tend to be less likely to focus in to a single type of food. Many times fishermen will find that casting herring to schools of stripers that are feeding on Mackerel will have their bait ignored, and vice versa. The Mackerel that show up here in Maine however, tend not to be so specifically focused. So if it looks like something similar in its experience that it has fed on anywhere from the deep, to the shallows along the east coast, it will at least give it a nibble.

Tinkers and Horses:
Maine sizes and names

While the name “Horse Mackerel” is typically used for the king Mackerel of the southern waters, here in Maine larger Mackerel from about 14 or more inches are locally referred to as horse Mackerel. While this is an inaccurate reference to Mackerel on the Maine coast, everyone will recognize what you are talking about. Smaller Macks from 5” to about 10” are most often referred to as “Tinks”, “Tinkers”, or “Tinker Mackerel”. This is a more accurate classification of the fish. While many fishermen will want to hook on a 14 inch Mackerel for their big stripers and blues, the Tinkers seem to be preferred and more readily recognized as a meal when the big fish are in the bay. 

How the Locals are catching the Macks

Method 1:
Mackerel from the Pier - Single hook

 All the guys down along the piers in Portland are fishing  medium to light weight tackle with a single hook and cut Mackerel or bait about 10 to 12 feet down to catch their Macks. By light to medium tackle, I mean any rod and reel combo that will run 10 to 12 lb test monofilament with a single bait holder hook of about a size 1 to 4. Just ahead of the hook they typically run a couple of split shot depending on the currents and tides. Some will also add on bobbers or floats to indicate strikes. This is where I first started fishing for Mackerel with any serious effort. The fishermen on the piers do see some success with this technique for the larger Mackerel found around the Portland piers.
                The bait is typically cast out as far as possible and allowed to drift or free float in toward the pier. Then just before it gets tangled on the piles, or hits bottom, it is reeled in and re-cast until a school or stray Mackerel runs the length of the pier and decides to grab the bait. Keeping the bait off the bottom is essential in this situation as bay crabs will happily grab up the bait.
                Cutting Mackerel for bait in this style of fishing is pretty straight forward. Numerous cuts are made down the side of the bait mackerel about ¼ or ½” apart, and then the knife is run down the spine to free the strips of bait. The bait strips are then attached to the bait holder hook so that the silvery belly part of the strip will undulate in the water.

Method 2:
Classic Diamond Jig – Cast and retrieve

                The second most commonly used method to recreationally take mackerel is to find a silverside school, or likely cover and start casting and retrieving the good ol’ reliable diamond jig in any size from ¼ oz to 1 oz.  This is usually done without bait, and the lure is made to waggle on the retrieve representing a crippled herring or silverside.  While this method can cover a lot of water, and can see some good success, it still only catches one at a time.

Method 3:
Christmas tree rigs – Catching more than one

                One of the most popular ways to catch Mackerel by fishermen looking for bait is to use a “Christmas tree” or Mackerel rig. This consists of any where from 3 to 7 hooks dressed with neon colored rubber or plastic tubing tied dropper loop style in a row. A bank sinker of 1 to 2 oz size is usually hooked to the end of the rig, and cast and retrieved, jigged or trolled from a boat. The rig represents a school or run of bait fish or shrimp. Often one Mackerel chasing or hooked on the rig can start a feeding frenzy and more will attach.

The Fishin’ Hole Method
Next Generation of Mack fishing

                It has always amazed me how fishermen can be such a tightly knit group, but be so removed from one another at the same time. The pier fishermen and women rarely, if ever hit the bay in a boat. Likewise the boat owners seem to never bother to spend time on the piers and breakwaters to see what the fishermen are doing there. The jetty and surfcasting fishermen seem to be in the middle, but not overly in touch with any others. Wherever I travel and see lines in the water, I tend to gravitate and start watching, chatting, and taking notes.
                Both Ryan and myself who own The Fishin Hole seem to always want to improve on the catch. It doesn’t really matter who is holding the rod, if they are catching fish, we are interested. This open minded approach to fishing has taught us many things. This approach is also coupled with a certain creativity to improve and expand upon what we have learned. When the fishing is slow, we will spend many hours talking about our experiences, what the fish are doing, and tying and throwing experimental baits into the water.
                All the above mentioned typical fishing methods needed to be combined and expanded upon so that we could get our bait in the boat faster, more reliably and get us chasing the bigger fish.  What resulted was a combination of all three of the most popular methods. While the standard generic fluorescent tubed Mack rigs were always available to us, we thought we could improve them. So we sat ourselves down at the tying bench to better the mass produced inferior rigs.

                Over the years we have tied a number of different styles of flies to turn into Mackerel rigs, and a lot of trial and error was involved. Anything from bare hooks, to elaborate flies caught fish, and it was quite some time and a lot of fishing before we finally settled on what it was that worked best for us personally. Doing a little homework I discovered that Mackerel can see color. Also, the accepted “old time down east” method was to tie a bit of red flannel onto a hook and troll.  We gathered up many colors and many materials from our tying supplies in the shop. Tied, and fished, tied and fished.

                We did find the macks indeed seem to like red, but they liked fluorescent colors more in the murky waters of the swirling bay. We went back to the generic Chinese tubes for a while, and compared them to fluorescent flies. The catch on the flies was almost doubled every time. Eventually we narrowed this improved catch down to the fact that the denier or artificial hair we were tying onto the rigs added a slight undulation and movement in the water. This light movement might seem out of place in big salty water, but delicate trout fishermen know for a fact that this makes a difference to finicky trout. We discovered that Mackerel are no different, but they need to make the decision of: eat it, or run from it much more quickly. They have no time to ponder the offered bait. This undulation that reminds them of shrimp fins, or moving bait running in a school is the deciding factor.

                Our catch was improved, and we kept tying, and sampling colors. The Fishin’ Hole always has a selection of various colored Mackerel rigs for various types of overcast and water conditions. We found the best average was with fluorescent orange or chartreuse flies tied with red thread. This combination seems to do the job in most conditions. We were catching more Macks than ever, but still wanted to improve on our rigs.

                We multiplied our catch even more when we started attaching ½ or ¾ oz diamond jigs to the end of our rigs. This, we figured, represented a silverside or herring chasing a school of smaller fish or shrimp. Seeing another fish eat, drives a Mackerel nuts. They instantly want to eat it first before they miss out! This also eliminates the debate for them of eat it, or run from it. “Another fish is chasing it, I must be able to eat it if he is eating it.”
                Things were looking up. We then started amplifying our catch and hook up rates even more by baiting the flies on the dropper rig. This attended to all 5 senses of the Mackerel, and made our custom trees irresistible. They see the rigs, they feel the flutter of the Jig, they smell and taste the baited hooks, the meat and soft fibers feels like food, so they hold on or continue to chase.

                When baiting the rigs, instead of using the longer strips the pier fishermen were using, we cubed these slices into roughly ½ inch chunks. If the mackerel are running heavily enough baiting beyond the first cast is a waste of time. The denier or fly material will hold the oily scent of the fish for quite some time. Re-baiting is only necessary when the bites start slowing down.

We tried tying our rigs with different numbers of flies, and just like our Smelt rigs we had to find a balance between catch and practical use. 4 drop rigs seem to work comfortably for us. More hooks can mean frustrating tangles and hassles and one or two more fish isn’t worth the headache. We found that a run of four was a nice balance between maximum catch, and maximum time with the line in the water.

Why use Fishin’ Hole rigs?

As if the above article isn’t enough reason to use our rigs, there is a quality aspect to consider. We tie most of our rigs on #1 or #2 long shank Mustad hooks. These are the most saltwater resistant hooks on the market in a manageable size that will catch fish and is big enough to bait. Of course when it comes to targeting tinkers, smaller hooks are used, and can be found at the shop.  We use Artificial Denier or Fishhair fibers that are 100% saltwater proof and will not fade. Our dropper looped flies are 100% hand made and hand tied here in Maine with Maine Mackerel in Mind… although I bet any mackerel will scoop them up. The flies are simple and straight forward. Utiliarian in nature. The flies on our mack rigs aren't fancy, because they don't need to be and only detract from the catch. We tie our rigs on 20lb test, enough to hold a good run of big macks. Our rigs are tied with a 30lb test barrel swivel at the lead, and a 30lb snap swivel at the end to make switching from diamond jig to any other hard or soft baits possible.
                Without these rigs, you will still catch your Mackerel, but you will be missing out on our experimentation, experience, and tried and tested improvements. Fish any one of the 3 methods above side by side with our method and rigs yourself to see what gets more fish into the boat or in your creel. If not, I suppose we will see you on the water while we are reeling them in. We’ll be sure to wave to you… if we have the time.

The Fishin’ Hole rigs can be cast from a pier just as easily as they can be jigged from a boat, and still work great. We have combined the techniques and experience of the hundreds of folks fishing around Maine that we have met and learned from. We took the best of what was working and combined them all into one dynamite fishing tactic that doesn’t let us down.

If you can't make it into the shop to buy your Fishin' Hole custom Mackerel rigs, you can order them online here. Please note that because of hook and material availability some rigs may differ in size or color depending on what we can order in. For our standard rigs we tie on size 1 or 2 and all will be Mustad hooks and made from fade proof denier.

For the full selection of our rigs, we encourage our customers to visit our shop.

Lloyd Metcalf
The Fishin’ Hole
377 River Rd.
Buxton, Maine  04093