The Size Of Mackeral Shoals?

[henda11]

does anyone know the size of an average mackeral shoal when they are all together?

[glennk]

No but I bet it is massive. More than 10 would be a good estimation of numbers involved

[MainBassMan]

Read some years ago that the shoals like that on chesil contain many millions of fish at first showing....

A few years ago on chesil I personally saw a shoal around 5.00 am where the sea was a bouncing mass for 100 x 200 yds plus............ :clap: :clap:

[glennk]

Seen that a few times. One of the best sites you can ever see as an angler is a mackerel feeding frenzy. An awesome sight.

[Leon Roskilly]

Fishing the Warren at Folkestone, as the tide was beginning to make, some small makerel shoals started to appear at fairly long range, only showing for a few minutes at a time.

 

Enjoyable fishing, requiring a sprint along the beach, then some fairly accurate casting with the feathers.

 

(Just a couple of metres short, beyond, or to the side and the feathers were ignored, so only really connecting with the odd shoal).

 

As the tide made, so the shoals became more numerous, and joined together in larger shoals, not quite so much skill needed.

 

Then approaching the top of the tide, all the shoals joined together into a mass of thousands of mackerel, jammed tightly against the concrete aprons, and all I had to do was to dip the feathers in and pull out a string of mackerel.

 

Kinda took all the fun out of it, so I took a break and gutted those I'd caught, and by the time I finished, the mackerel were gone.

[morue]

http://www.ices.dk/marineworld/fishmap/ice...rsemackerel.pdf

Mackerel, like most scombrids, are highly-streamlined, fast-swimming, pelagic fish, and they are

widespread in shelf seas of the North Atlantic, usually at depths of less than 200 m. They are a classic

shoaling fish, with shoals of up to 9 km long, 4 km wide, and 40 m deep being reported [2]. Mackerel is

caught in large quantities with purse seines and large pelagic trawls, but is also rewarded by anglers as a

sporting fish. Having no swim bladder, even dense schools do not show up clearly on echo sounders.

[Elton]

The ship on that Trawlermen programme last night netted 500 tons (or was it tonnes?) in one go!

[glennk]

The UK record lies with the Altaire at 1900 tons. I worked it out to be around 4 million mackerel.

 

My favourite way to eat it is the stuff in tomato sauce often followed by a large glass of Milk Meowwwwwwwww

[FireFly]

My favourite way to eat it is the stuff in tomato sauce often followed by a large glass of Milk Meowwwwwwwww

 

I love them grilled and then cheddar cheese over the top and grilled until golden brown.

 

Most folk think the cheese will make it real greasy but it works the other way around. The cheese soaks up the juices and it tastes absolutely divine.

Who mentioned food again?

[Toerag]

Yep, 500tonnes in one tow. I had a tour round a french pelagic freezer trawler last summer, and they reckoned on getting 150 tonnes of blue whiting a tow.