Sri Lankan Seerfish

[canelles]

Hi,
I'm Alex from Germany, new to this forum and I usually fish lakes and streams in the area I live. Now my dad lives in Sri Lanka and I visit him once or twice a year and of course I tried some fishing. I went out with locals for bottom fishing and some trolling. Main fish when trolling is Seerfish or Narrow-barred Spanish mackerel (Scomberomorus commerson). I used 13cm Rapala CD, Redhead produced most strikes. No strikes on surface lures. I lost many fish!? Maybe I was fishing too heavy? I used 30lbs tackle and monoline. Has anybody experience with this fish? Good lures, tackle, trolling speed? This fish looks very much like a king mackerel.
I hope some of you can help!

Best regards
Alex

[Capt. Fred]

Yup, that does look like a king. I think there are a bunch of real similar fish in that family scattered around the world. We get the kings in Hatteras North Carolina quite often. Mostly the run is in the spring and fall. I get them on a drone spoon being run behind a planer or on a ballyhoo/skirt combo run behind the planer. This gets the lure down anywhere from 5 to 25 feet or so. They deffinitely seem to prefer hitting lures and baits trolled below the surface. I do occasionly get them on a surface trolled ballyhoo/sea witch combo.

Another real fun technique is live baiting them with light tackle. That's a blast. You can also use dead ballyhoo that are just dropped behind a drifting boat and slowly jigged.

[fishfighter]

CD 18 in red/white or any of them in silver/blue or black will do.You need to sharping the hooks or change the out all together.Use a single wire in the 40-60lb class.

Another way you can catch them is do a search on how we fish king fish.Do read up on live baiting.

[canelles]

Hi fishfighter,
you mean single wire as leader? I used silvercoloured multistrand 80lbs steel leader because I didn't quite know what to expect. I read a little about kings and it seems that this leader may spook them. I'll try single wire next time. I replaced the trebles on the Rapalas with double hooks and there are sharp like hell.

Capt. Fred,
the locals do livebaiting from bigger boats, I didn't have the chance to check this out. The small boats don't have livewells... Some use things like crab traps to keep bait outboards.
How do you rig the bait to jig from the drifting boat? Do you use a jighead? Is an ABU Ambassadeur C3 6500 sufficient for livebaiting or this kind of jigging?
Thanks for your replies!

Alex

[Capt. Fred]

Hi Alex, I use the same rig for live baiting and for jigging a dead ballyhoo. This link is to a typical set up.

Sea Striker Live Bait Kingfish Double Rig w/ 60lb. #7 Wire - DLBR - BoatersWorld.com

The small j-hook goes up near the head of the bait and the treble goes down further towards the tail. For using dead ballyhoo I squeeze them as if I were preparing them for trolling. I squash the ribs and break the backbone. Then I put the small j-hook through the lips to close the mouth and slip one of the trebles into the skin down near the tail of the bait. I do use a very small pink or green skirt on the rig that slides down onto the head of the ballyhoo.

Let the bait out slowly and give it very slow and short tugs just to give it a bit of action.

That particular reel may be a little light for the fish we get around here. They probably average 20 lbs or so but a 40 or 50 isn't that uncommon. I would guess you want a reel that will hold 300 yards or so of 20 lb test if they get as big as our fish. If they are smaller in general then you may be fine.

[Redweiser]

G'day Alex, they do have some big mackerel on that side of the pond. Have a friend in Caloundra, Australia (above Brisbane) that catches some nice ones. He live baits for large fish like we do over here. Go to KC.com for info on rigging .... it's a kingfish site.

Here's a few pics of Scotty and fish he catches.

[rbhankins001]

I think that is a narrow banded spanish mackerel. I has a friend who was deployed to the East Coast of Africa who sent me some pics and that's what they looked like. I could tell for sure if I saw it from the side (the snout is unique).

I will check my other computer for his pics, and they only trolled artificials if I remember right (I do).

I'm sure live baiting would be effective.

If you are setting your drag much over a few pounds it might be too heavy, that is a soft mouthed fish.

Let me check and get back on this.

-Rob

[Redweiser]

Rob,
They are Narrow-Barred Spanish Mackerel (Scomberomorus Commerson).

Scotty said they're catching the big ones on large live bait as we do here ... some over 100 lb.

Scotty's buddy with a few.

[fishfighter]

Single wire for troll baits and for live baiting.When rigging for live baiting,I use 4xxx treble hook up front and a 2xxx as the stinger.Back in the days when we could sell those trash fish and there were no limits,we would load the boat down with them.Selling over 2000lbs a day.Best bait was an old home made spoon.I was made out of one of those large cooking spoons with most of the handle cut off and a big 10/0 J hook installed on the back.We would put out 4 or 5 of them at a time and make a pass around a rig and hook up on three or four on them at a time.

Oh,that was the days before all those clowns start chasing kings and that was about the time I quite messing with them!

[canelles]

Thanks for all the tips so far!
Redweiser, I had no idea they would grow that big!!!
Biggest ones I've seen around the fishmarkets were a maximum of 40 pounds I would say. And many 3-5 pounders are sold. Other than kingfish this is the most expensive fish on the local markets in Sri Lanka and very tasty. So probably or quite sure they're overfished. After Tsunami in 2004 lots of small boats and outboards were bought with donations to help the people there. All of a sudden everybody claimed he was a fishermen before Tsunami and got one. The number of commercial fishermen nearly doubled, many of them were farmers before Tsunami! But you can make better money with a new boat! I understand these people.
So I'll try some live baiting next time there.
Alex