Any opportunity that presents itself to me to catch mackerel will be taken because I love the things. If I pick up half a dozen on the way out offshore, or while anchored up fishing during the summer months, I see that as a positive result. For while not every species of fish is either a mackerel predator or willing to take a smaller cut portions, many are, including occasionally some which you might not normally expect such as wrasse and mullet, and when you present it fresh it is unbeatable. I once caught a 4¼ pound Welsh thick lipped grey mullet on a whole mackerel fillet while fishing around an inshore wreck for bass, and beat the Scottish ballan wrasse record (returned alive unclaimed) on a long mackerel belly cut while drifting for pollack. Similarly, if I get another half dozen on the way back in to put on ice in the cool box for home I am equally happy. In my opinion, there is no better eating fish in UK waters, providing it is kept cool and plated up within hours of capture, and I'm sure a lot of other people see mackerel in exactly the same light. It's that time between dropping the feathers down on the way out for bait, and again on the way back for a few to take home that is so often the 'iffy' bit. That's when a great many anglers suddenly start to look down their noses at the mackerel. Whether it's the ease (though not always) with which they are caught, the lack of finesse used to drag them aboard as fast as possible so as to be away using them for other things, or the fact that they carry the label 'bait fish' is difficult to say. Whatever the reason, where that is the case, those feeling that way are missing out on a real angling treasure.

The importance of mackerel not only to UK sea angling, but to both the inshore as well as the offshore food chain simply cannot be overstressed. To get a better appreciation of just how important, you need to think far wider than simply bait or barbie fodder. If the species were to be pushed to the brink of collapse, or worse still went into terminal decline, other fish, fishermen, and the fishing industry generally would be in deep(er) trouble. Whether we think so or not, directly or indirectly, we would all miss them dearly. The affect of their absence from the food chain would be as devastating as say a professional sprint cyclist loosing a link from the chain on his or her bike in an Olympic final, with potential spin-off catastrophes radiating out in all sorts of other directions. Actually, the term food chain is in-correct, both technically, and in helping explain how the whole system works. A chain suggests a straight line, which, if it is broken by the removal of a just one link, upsets a single directional line of flow. The scientifically accepted term is food web, which like a spiders web, has many inter-connected strands going off in lots of different directions. Break one and it can have associated knock on implications in all sorts of other places, not only weakening the structure as a whole, but placing even greater burdens elsewhere, though the web could still be functional to a degree unlike a straight line constructed from links which would not.

To fully appreciate the vital role, certainly in UK waters, that the mackerel plays, you need first to have some understanding of how a food web works. It's a fairly simple concept. At the centre of the whole thing, and of our particular solar system, is the sun. Light reaching the earth from the sun is our only source of incoming external energy, and it is this that is the foundation stone for life on this planet. Plants take carbon-dioxide from the atmosphere, and using the energy from from certain wavelengths in sunlight, are able to sever the chemical bond between the carbon bit, which is a single atom, and the dioxide bit which is two oxygen atoms linked together, better known to us as O2 or simply as oxygen. Along with water and a few inorganic chemicals also derived from the environment, the carbon is then used in the chemical construction of the plant, while the O2 bit is discarded for us and all other oxygen dependent life forms to breath. All green plants, including microscopic algae, of which there are millions in the upper layers of the sea, can do this trick, which is known as photosynthesis, and all can survive without animals including either us or fish being present. Unfortunately, animals cannot survive without plants as they can't carry out photosynthesis and must therefore eat plants or other animals to acquire their energy. They (we) also require plants to have something to breathe. Plants therefore, including microscopic aquatic algae, are the very foundation upon which the food web is built, and as such are labeled as 'Primary Producers'. At sea, small planktonic animals such as the larvae of crabs and fish, and also mature copepods graze on these tiny plants consuming them in their millions, and as they are the first course of bricks or 'Trophic Level' so to speak built onto the algae foundations, are labeled 'Primary Consumers'. Now this is where the mackerel link comes in. Mackerel, and other planktonic feeding fish like them that eat the tiny animals which graze on the algae are labeled 'Secondary Consumers', and are the vital larger prey link between the sunlight fed microscopic world of the upper layers of the sea, and the larger predatory fish anglers love to catch.

Just to complete the story, predators of mackerel which are the next trophic level up, are known as 'Tertiary Consumers', though the term would also include for example the great white shark if one came along and ate a tope which had earlier polished off a few mackerel. Another relevant scientific fact here is that each time you jump up a trophic level such as from 'Primary Consumer' to 'Secondary Consumer', and again to 'Tertiary Consumer', there is an approximate ten fold decrease in sustainable population figures, or to put it another way, a healthy thriving population of ten thousand tonnes of mackerel can support one thousand tonnes of tope and other predators. That's how all aquatic as well as terrestrial ecosystems work. There have to be breeding survivors at every level to keep the whole thing going. A 10:1 ratio is the minimum sustainable requirement to achieve this, and the way in which ecosystems are self regulating. So, if or when for whatever reason numbers at one level decline, there will eventually be a knock on effect. That said, tope are not specialist feeders in the sense that they rely to an appreciable degree on mackerel. But a species that does, such as the blue shark which feeds well up off the bottom over deep water almost exclusively on 'Secondary Consumers' such as mackerel and pilchards, would suddenly be faced with one of two stark options, these being starvation, or a switch in feeding to something else if that were possible, which of itself could then lead to food shortages and decline for other specialist feeders. The recent decline in cod numbers and of other edible bottom feeding species could in part explain the 'coincidental' increase in the dogfish population by virtue of the fact that less cod means more available food for other non commercial species to exploit in the 10:1 predator prey relationship. And it is this ability to branch out sideways as well as upwards that makes the term food web a more fitting definition than food chain.

Before leaving the science side of things altogether, that 10:1 ratio mentioned previously crops up elsewhere, though in a different context, as an important figure in the feeding cycle of animals. Most fish, including mackerel, are cold blooded or ectothermic. In other words, they rely on the ambient temperature of their surroundings for the their internal body temperature. However, a close relative of the mackerels, the tunas, along with one family of sharks, are to an extent warm blooded or endothermic, with reports in some studies of them achieving internal temperatures of up to 20oC more than their surroundings. The advantage of this is an increase in muscular performance which explains the power and speed of tuna, and of some sharks such as the great white. The disadvantage however is that they need to eat more food to 'fuel the furnace'. Human beings and other animals that are totally warm blooded need ten times as much food as reptiles or fish of comparable size which are cold blooded. Warm blooded fish fall somewhere in between the two, as they are only able to elevate their internal temperature to a certain level above their surroundings, and in some cases this is confined to specific areas of the body such as the muscles, eyes and brain. If all fish could elevate their internal body temperature, angling would be a very different game. On the one hand, fish would fight so very much harder due to a speeding up of the chemical processes responsible for providing energy to the muscles. This is why even cold blooded species in warmer tropical waters always seem to fight that much harder than those taken at cooler higher latitudes. But to balance out the gains there would theoretically be fewer of them, as each would have to eat more food, which is in limited supply, to generate the body heat. In mammals such as ourselves that would be ten times more food, as 90% of what we eat is used to keep us warm, which explains why we eat less in summer and more in winter.

Getting back to the fishing, catching mackerel for bait is for many aspects of boat fishing an integral first stage in the trip, and often crucial to getting the main objective of the day underway ASAP. A hurdle to be crossed as quickly as possible, which goes some way towards explaining why feathering can be something of a chore, particularly where the shoals have become scattered due to stormy weather putting lots of colour in the water, particularly close inshore, which planktonic feeders don't like, making them more likely to go off into deeper water and be harder to locate. When they are thick on the ground and everywhere, stupid and suicidal is probably quite an accurate description. Certainly not fish worthy of any sort of special treatment?. That however depends very much on how you look at your fishing and what you want to get out of it. If winching up freezer fodder in the form of dabs, whiting and small codling on a 30 pound class outfit with a pound or more of lead to touch bottom is more of a turn on that having something lively pulling you string on an ultra light rod, then click on the 'close' button in the top right hard corner of the screen now and look at some of the other articles instead. If on the other hand you are happy to catch whatever comes along, and get the maximum measure of pleasure from the experience, then read on. But before we do go any further, let me first say that we all accept that no one is going to want to be a mackerel specialist to the exclusion of all else. That said, we can't expect to catch big hard fighting fish every trip either. It's all about balance and compromise. Even if you only devote half an hour for a bit of fun, or fish light for them while the bigger baits are down waiting to be picked up, it can contribute much towards both the pleasure of the day and to honing your skills at actually playing a fish that will actively fight back, and which has on appropriately sized tackle, a very real chance of getting away.

Recognising then that there is often a very real need to un-sportingly knock out a couple of dozen fresh mackerel quickly before entertaining thoughts of anything else, let's first take a closer look at how best this can be achieved. Mackerel spend much of their lives feeding on the copepods which graze on planktonic algae, though they will often also turn their attention to small fish as and when the opportunity arises, which is why feathers designed to mimmick fish fry can be so effective. However, the term 'feathers' has in recent times come to mean many things, a lot of which technically fall way outside the true definition of these lures. Way back when I first started fishing, feathers were just that. Different coloured dyed chicken feathers would be incorporated into the same string of lures, which helped from the point of view that like all fish, mackerel can show colour preferences according to changing conditions. At least with a selection, all available options were being covered. Back then they were whipped onto heavy gauge tinned hooks that would soon blunt or rust, with the feathers themselves being easily pulled clear of their fixings. The actual feathers were also at times too long in relation to the hook shank, causing fish to grab at them without becoming hooked. So it was sometimes necessary to trim them shorter. Nowadays there are many different patterns to choose from with many different lure body materials. One of the early variants from actual feathers that did work particularly well on its day was a pattern that had a couple of strips of silver flectolite whipped over a mylar body. You can probably still get them if you shop around. Hokkai's are another good option. That said, my particular favourite comes from the Mustad Rigs range and is a small rubber shrimp with the hook coming out from its mouth. They come in red and luminous greeny-white, both of which have their day, though in my experience red works the best. If I had a criticism it would be the thinness of the mono used to rig them with. I personally would have liked it a bit thicker to reduce the degree of kinking and self tangling.

I get the impression at times that for some people, mackerel feathering is simply a matter of dropping a set of lures over the side and hoping they get lucky. You will often hear anglers asking each other where the fish are, which is fine if someone gets into them very early on, or they are thin on the ground. But really, you should be looking for them all the time, and if you do, unless they are particularly sparse, you will get them. My normal routine is to drop maybe six feet below the surface leaving the reel out of gear with my thumb on the spool to stop it and pumping the rod tip up and down a couple of times, then let another yard or so of line from the spool which I repeat all the way to the bottom. You can reverse the process on the way back up, which I never do preferring to come back and search on the way down. But that's just me. Of course, there will be days when you don't need to do that. Days when there are so many fish they will stop the feathers and the lead while in free fall leaving the line hanging limp from the rod tip. You can also bait the feathers with tiny belly cuts of mackerel, though this usually isn't necessary, unless of course you are hoping to pick up a bonus fish such as a pollack, gurnard or whatever when the lead touches bottom. Baited feathers are actually one of the most versatile bottom fishing rigs ever devised, especially on the drift over tackle hungry ground. The number of species they will take when fished permanently at the bottom is quite staggering. I've even seen them pick up halibut in Norwegian waters.

Obviously, if it's fun fishing you are after, then mackerel need to be fished for with a single hook to ensure they come up one at a time so that they can't fight against each other. At its most basic, simply scale the hand tackle right down to an ultra-light spinning rod and small fished spool reel. A tiny red gill on a short light weight flying collar ring is an excellent way of doing it. But there are many other equally successful lures to be tried, or even a long thin belly cut from a fresh mackerel, again fished on the move. Float fishing with a sliding float set at the appropriate feeding depth is another way. But far and away the most sporting approach is with a fly rod using a fairly fast sinking line and feather type lure fished on the drift. If you fish it at anchor, the tide will have too much to say in terms of getting the line to sink far enough, unless either the fish are near the top or the fly is weighted. But it can be done with a willingness to give it a go and by taking a range of line and lure options for getting down to the shoals, certainly in settled weather inshore. And when you do, with whatever your chosen method including feathers, try not to take more than you will actually need for rubby dubby, eating or for bait. One way of minimising this is to treat them right from the onset so that they don't go off and need replacing later in the day. A large cool box with some frozen bags of ice in it is one way. This also helps keep the boat clean, reducing the need for power washing later to shift the dried on splattering of scales and blood. And for home use you can't beat one of the smaller lunch type cool boxes capable to holding maybe half a dozen fish and an ice pack. Aim to catch the fish just as you are about to head off back to port and you will have the tastiest fish you are ever likely to catch when you land back home.