With all this talk about school mackerel over the last few weeks I thought I had better show you an example of these hard fighting good tasting fish. This week’s picture is a good example of the quality of the fish that are around at the moment. These fish were two of seven caught out at the shipping channel markers off Bribie Island. To know which marker to target you must check to see if there is any bait around it by circling the marker and watching your sounder. If there is bait, there is a good chance a predator fish or two will be there for an easy feed. They are also around the closer in structures but are of smaller size.
You may notice in the picture that fish have had their necks snapped, this is very important in catching pelagic fish (pelagic fish are any fish that will chase its prey). A pelagic fish when chasing food or when caught will use a lot of energy and in turn will heat up causing it to produce a toxin that smells like ammonia, this will affect the taste of the fish. When caught you need to kill the fish and bleed it as soon as possible thus removing the heated blood and improving the taste of your catch. It should also be put on ice as soon as it is bled.
Other fish that need to be bled are tailor, wahoo, all species of mackerel, dolphinfish (mahi mahi or dorado), amber jacks (Samson fish), all species of billfish, cobia and kingfish. The jury is out as to whether you need to bleed snapper or not but it can’t hurt, better to be safe than sorry.
Bribie Island fishing report courtesy of Nigel Newman from Gateway Bait & Tackle.