Also known as Spanish, Spanish mack, Macks, Spotted mackerel, Scomberomorus maculatus. Bait, technique, tide windows, and where the bite is on right now.
Spanish Mackerel — Fast, toothy, gold-spotted speedsters that boil bait from the Carolinas to Texas. Also called Spanish, Spanish mack, Macks, Spotted mackerel, Scomberomorus maculatus.
Spanish Mackerel is also known as: Spanish, Spanish mack, Macks, Spotted mackerel, Scomberomorus maculatus. Fast, toothy, gold-spotted speedsters that boil bait from the Carolinas to Texas.
Regional names can confuse anglers and cause misidentification. The table of common names below covers the most-used alternatives across Australia, New Zealand and the US:
Key to correct identification: check the regulations-authority species sheet for your state or territory before keeping any fish — minimum legal sizes, bag limits and identification guides are published by each fisheries department and are the authoritative source.
Hero spots in our coverage where Spanish Mackerel is in season for June. Click through for the live forecast.
Out of season across our covered spots in June.
Find the birds and the boils — Spanish run in fast surface schools shredding glass minnows and silversides, often with terns diving on top. Troll Clarkspoons at 5–7 knots behind a #1 planer or a trolling sinker to get the spoon down and moving fast; vary depth until you find them, then circle the school without running over it. From piers, jetties, and the surf, make long casts past the fish with a Gotcha plug or Kastmaster and burn it back just under the surface — a slow lure gets ignored. They have razor teeth, so run a foot or two of 30–40 lb fluorocarbon or a short trace of #2–#4 single-strand wire; wire gets more cut-offs but stops the bite-throughs when they're keyed up. Match the hatch in size — when they're on tiny glass minnows, downsize to a 00 Clarkspoon or a small spoon, because a fat plug gets refused. Bleed and ice them immediately; the meat is oily and goes soft fast in the heat.
Moving water is everything around inlets, jetties, and the beachfront. Work the last of the outgoing and the first of the incoming when current sweeps glass minnows out of the inlet and stacks Spanish at the mouth and along the jetty rocks. Early morning and the last hour of light are prime — the schools push shallow and crash bait on top in low light, then slide deeper and scatter under a high sun. On nearshore reefs and wrecks, the slack-to-running transition fires the bite.
Spanish are a daylight, sight-feeding fish, so moon phase matters less than light and bait. New and full-moon spring tides move more water through the inlets and concentrate bait — that current edge is the real driver, not the lunar phase itself. Stronger tidal flow around the new and full means better-defined bait lines and more aggressive surface feeding at the inlet mouths.
Spanish mackerel are managed differently in state waters versus federal (EEZ) waters, and bag and size limits vary by state and region and can change in-season — Gulf and South Atlantic rules differ. There's no closed season most years, but commercial trip and quota closures can affect the recreational picture in some areas. Always confirm current bag, size, and any trip limits with your state agency (e.g., FWC, NCDMF, SCDNR, TPWD, GADNR) or NOAA Fisheries before you keep fish.
US state size & bag limits for Spanish Mackerel: FL · TX · NC · SC · GA · AL · LA · VA
Olli-Mikael Vaittinen has fished his whole life. Fifteen years of fly fishing, guiding seasons on Norway's Lakselva — his favourite Atlantic salmon river — and a blue marlin landed in Vava'u, Tonga. Founder of Fishare — the app that puts the data behind the decisions every angler makes on the water.
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