The mackerel are here!

After a frustrating few weeks of heavy winds and watching the forecasts every day in vain, finally the opportunity came for a few hours fishing.  When I arrived it was pretty lumpy out there, a 4 foot swell with a period of about 4 seconds made things a bit tricky, with the odd wave crashing into my kayak. 

The winds had whipped the water up to a thick green colour again and bass were few and far between. As is so often the case, I hooked a small one second cast and it swallowed the final two trebles of my Zonk. I was greatly encouraged to pick up a fish so quickly and thought my luck might be in, but that was it as far as bass were concerned.  Fortunately the mackerel were much more obliging.

There must have been thousands on that short stretch of coastline. It made me wonder how the bass could compete for the same food source, as the mackerel were like a plague of locusts.   There didn't seem to be anywhere your hokkais could hit the bottom without three or four mackerel hitting them first.  Mind you, some of the mackerel were themselves so small that I can imagine one or two bass would have been having a go at them instead of the sandeel!