Wammo! Now that’s a barra!

At 131cm in length and surely well over 25 kg in weight, this spectacular barra must be a fish of a lifetime for Ryan Hodgson.

Earlier this month, Ryan was fishing the Roper River with his friend Mike Nimmo who took the photo. 

The lads were trolling trolling down past Kangaroo Island when the big barra latched onto Ryan’s green/yellow 3 metre Halco Scorpion.

The incredible barra jumped, ran and thrashed for 15 minutes before Ryan could land it.

Note the size of the head – indicative of an older, wild-caught barra.

The boys did the right thing by releasing it and apparently it swam away strongly.

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For value-for-money reels, it’s hard to go past the Shimano Torium in size 16 or 20, or the level-wind Tekoda in 500 or 600.

If your budget can afford it, check out the Shimano Trinidad 16N with its narrow spool and super-fast retrieve.

Monofilament is fine for mackerel in sizes 8-10 kg; in braid you can go 15-24 kg and fit heaps on any of the reels mentioned above.

Naturally you’ll need wire trace – 30 kg breaking strain minimum.

Okay, you’re out on the shoal where you can either troll or anchor and bait fish for mackerel.

Go the latter for the best chance of success.

As long as you’re anchored on a ledge or pinnacle in mackerel country, you can bring the macks to you and not go looking for them.

The secret is a pilchard berley trail.

Chop up some pillies in a bucket of water and feed the small particles into the current at regular intervals.

A berley bucket attached to the transom of the boat is great for this because it keeps the inside clean and the trail constant.

Attach a triple-ganged-hook rig to your wire trace and secure a whole pilchard with all three hooks with the top hook going through the pilchard’s eye.

Out she goes, set about 30 metres behind the boat.

If the current is strong, you’ll need a bit of lead to hold it below the surface.

Set the reel on ratchet with the drag off but ready to be engaged the instant a mack attacks.

While you’re waiting, you can always drop a bottom rig down for a reefie.

A hot tip is to float out a small Spanish flag as live bait.

As long as you have at least 300 m of line, you don’t need a heavy drag; better to let a mackerel burn itself out on that first blistering run rather than try to bully it to the boat.

Now let’s look at trolling methods.

Particularly with the advent of GPS technology, and the ability to revisit almost the exact spot on the water where you have previously logged a mack waypoint, trolling hard-bodied lures for mackerel is now more deadly than ever.

Let’s start at the business end of mackerel trolling: the lure itself.

For mackerel, small lures are not nearly as good as big lures, and plenty of shine and contrast will invariably improve results.

Following are some of the better lures that catch mackerel: the locally-manufactured MacMagnets, the Classic 160s and the Halco Lasers.

There are two colour styles which seem to account for the bulk of mackerel catches up our way: the red head with white body, or “Qantas” colour, and anything that is predominately chromed and again has a bit of red.

There is absolutely no doubt that the best times to be trolling for mackerel are during the first and last couple of hours of daylight.

That is particularly the case if the mackerel are scarce, or not on the job.

At other times, when the schools are large and the macks are more competitive, they will bite all day.

Headlands adjacent to bays and river mouths, as well as offshore ledges and rocky pinnacles, are common mackerel habitat and always worth a shot.

Look for bait schools on the surface; and below the surface as indicated by your depth sounder.

Troll around these at a brisk pace – say, 6 knots or more – and mark any spot that you want to spend time trolling over.

Naturally, if you hook a mackerel, you should mark it on the GPS immediately.

As with baitfishing for Spanish mackerel, a wire trace of minimum 30 kg is essential.

The same outfits I mentioned above for baitfishing at anchor are also perfect for trolling for mackerel.

Remember to sharpen your hooks as a mackerel’s jaw is pretty hard, and set your reel drag to “strike”.

Be very careful gaffing and pulling your big mack aboard as they have razor-sharp teeth and they tend to thrash about.

It’s best to calm your mackerel down with a sharp blow or two from a “Priest” – usually a piece of pipe or a wooden club.

Bleed your mackerel by cutting its throat and you’ll definitely improve the quality of the flesh.

Fillet it and get the fillets on ice quickly.

Remember also your bag limits of five macks in possession; more than enough to feed family and friends.