Trolling for Mackerel: Spoons, Planers and Speed

Part of Techniques · All fishing tutorials

Spanish mackerel and kingfish roam Florida’s nearshore water in loose, fast-moving schools, and blind-casting for them burns a lot of empty water. Trolling a small spread of spoons turns your boat into a search tool: cover the beach troughs and nearshore reefs at steady speed, and the rods tell you when you cross the fish. The classic rig is almost unchanged since your grandfather’s day because it flat works — a silver Clark spoon pulled behind a small planer.

This page covers building the spoon-and-planer rig, setting a clean two-to-four line spread, choosing speed and depth, and reading birds and bait pods to find fish instead of just hoping to cross them — including the fall kingfish runs that make trolling season on both coasts.

Jump to: The Spoon-and-Planer Rig · Setting the Spread · Speed and Depth · Finding the Fish

The Spoon-and-Planer Rig

The planer does the diving. A #1 planer trips down to depth at trolling speed and pops to the surface when a fish strikes, and behind it you run a long leader — 20 to 30 feet of 20- to 30-pound monofilament — to a small Clark spoon in size 0 or 1. The long leader matters: mackerel are sharp-eyed, and the spoon needs to swim well behind the planer’s turbulence. Put a small barrel swivel ahead of the planer to manage line twist, and check the spoon’s action boatside before you set it — it should flash and wobble, not spin.

• Bite leaders: mackerel teeth cut mono cleanly, and you will lose spoons. A few inches of light single-strand wire ahead of the spoon, or a heavier 40- to 50-pound mono bite section, saves most of them. Kings justify the wire almost every hookup.
• Swap one spoon for a small skirted jig or feather on the surface line for variety — bluefish, bonito and jacks pile onto it.
• Carry spare spoons and pre-tied leaders. When the school is under the boat, re-rigging speed decides whether you catch two fish or six.

Setting the Spread

Two lines is a spread; four is a comfortable working maximum for a small boat. Run the planer lines deepest and shortest, set well behind the boat on each side. Run one or two flat lines farther back on the surface — a spoon behind a small trolling weight, or a feather jig skipping in the prop wash zone beyond the turbulence. Stagger the distances so no two lures run at the same depth or the same spot in the wake. When a rod goes off, leave the other lines fishing: the hooked fish’s schoolmates are still behind you, and doubling up is normal in a good school. In turns, the inside lines slow and sink and the outside lines speed and rise — fish often hit the changing lure, so watch the inside rod on every turn.

Speed and Depth

Most Florida mackerel trolling happens between 4 and 6 knots. Slower gives the planers less depth and is safer in crowded water over shallow bars; a touch faster often triggers strikes from fish that ignored a lazy spoon. If you are marking bait and getting no hits, change speed before you change lures, in half-knot steps. Depth follows from the planer size and how much line you have out — more line, more depth — and the fish set the target: spoons should ride in the same third of the water column as the bait schools on your sounder. On bright, calm days the fish hold deeper and the planers earn their keep; on overcast or choppy days, the surface flat lines often outfish everything.

Finding the Fish: Birds and Bait Pods

Trolling is searching, and the ocean posts signs. Diving terns and gulls mean bait is being pushed up by predators below — troll the edges of the action, not through the middle of it, so your spread works the school’s flank without scattering the bait. Bait pods dimpling the surface on a calm morning deserve a slow pass down-sun where you can see into the water. Color changes, tide rips off inlet mouths, and the hard-bottom patches and artificial reefs within a few miles of the beach all hold mackerel predictably.

The calendar matters as much as the chart. Spring brings Spanish mackerel up both coasts, and the fall kingfish runs — detailed in our king mackerel fishing guide — put big fish within small-boat range of the beaches. Check the What’s Biting calendar for your coast before the trip, and when you stop on a school, a little chumming holds them at the boat for casting — our tutorial on chumming for fish covers that handoff from trolling to casting.

Keep Learning

Know your two targets: the Spanish mackerel fishing guide covers the bread-and-butter fish of this technique, and the king mackerel guide covers its bigger, faster cousin and the seasons for both.

Plan trips around the runs with the What’s Biting calendar, and keep the school boatside once you find it by following our chumming for fish tutorial — the classic one-two of Florida nearshore fishing.