Spring macks bring back memories of lost fishing bounty
"The past is never dead. It's not even past." — William Faulkner
It's a common lament among anglers who have been fortunate enough to experience all of the fantastic fishing that our region once offered. Memories of the big tiderunner trout, or the big slammer bluefish that once prowled the shipping approaches of Delaware Bay and up and are now relegated to those with much water under the keel. Others might remember instead the big chunk bite along the 30 fathom line for nice yellowfins.
Boats would leave as darkness was falling and spend more time actually getting to the grounds than catching the fish! Incredibly enough that was almost two decades ago.
Remember the good open bottom fishing we had for summer flounder, where boats could drift for miles catching flounder and you could go a week using the same fluke killer, sharpening the hook each day with a rub against the rail.
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How about when the limit on tog was 20 fish and customers actually complained that they wouldn't come for that few!
Sadly, there is a whole new generation for which summer flounder fishing means jockeying over some reef losing rigs and taking home four fish, for whom one trout might mean a "limit" and tog fishing is a shadow of what it once was.
Happily, though, there might be a glimmer of resurgence ahead.
The harbinger of spring saltwater fishing along the lower Delaware coast in the not-so-distant past was the Atlantic, or Boston, mackerel. Anglers used to come from states away to catch the scrappy macks and there was no better cure for the winter doldrums.
The macks came in big schools and were pretty decent eating if you ate them fresh. They really shined when smoked and were used by many anglers as later bait for big blues, stripers, summer flounder and sharks. Local boats were "railed," meaning that every inch of space along the side was taken, and anglers would steadily crank the fish in.
Employing "Christmas tree" rigs of multiple hooks with red Norwegian worms anchored with a diamond jig, triple headers were common. When the schools were thick enough, the fish would literally "stop it on the way down" as if you had hit bottom 20 feet down in 80 feet.
As the bite started, you'd count as the rig fell and when you hooked up, you'd let the other anglers know how deep. You'd feel the fish circling and that quick head-shaking of a hooked pelagic fish, the macks circling in bright shimmering silver in a whirling merry-go-round on the way to the surface.
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The macks were well known for following hooked fish up to the boat, so sharpies would work together keeping fish in the water until their partner hooked up.
Back in the age before cellphones, cars would park along Pilottown Road waiting for the boats to return to see if the "run" had started. Sometimes the boats would return early with loads of the macks, and we'd be picking the tiny scales off of rental rods until July. The bigger fish seemed to come first with the smaller, "tinker" macks coming later until finally one would come up bitten in half by a bluefish, ending the season.
Whether or not the macks fell victim to virtual anthropogenic extinction through a joint venture project with Russia or moved offshore as we've seen many species do is certainly a matter of debate. Regardless, for some reason there seem to be a few fish around this season.
Macks have been caught in Virginia and locally as close as Ocean City, Maryland. A paucity of decent weekend weather has hampered Capt. HD Parsons from trying the first local trips but, rest assured, the bad weekend weather can't last forever. At least until I put the boat in!
So when the weather clears, climb aboard and see what we old folks are talking about. Spring macks. Can't beat it!
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