Mackerel

Nothing rings in a Cornish summer like the first mackerel. As the sea warms they pour inshore by the thousand, hunting hard against the headlands and right under the rod tip. Torpedo-bodied and tiger-striped, a fresh one almost burns blue and silver in your hand. They are fast, plentiful and gloriously easy to fall for, which is why half the county learned to fish on them, and they are better still laid over coals the same evening.

How to spot it

There is no mistaking a mackerel in the hand. The body is sleek and torpedo-shaped, narrowing to a deeply forked tail, the back a hard metallic blue-green crossed by bold dark bars. Those bars run almost vertically, like the ripples the tide leaves in wet sand, above a belly of mirror-bright silver. Most run 30-40cm. The clincher, though, is the shine: a fish straight from the water has an iridescence that seems lit from within, and it fades within the hour once the mackerel is out of the sea. No tired fish can fake that living gleam.

Where it lives

Mackerel roam all around Cornwall in restless shoals, chasing the small fish and plankton they feed on. Through the cold months they hold offshore in deeper water, but as the sea warms they sweep inshore in huge numbers, the first wave arriving around May. They hunt hard right up against the rocks, beneath the headlands and into the breaking surf, which puts them squarely within reach of the shore angler. From May and June and on through the summer is the season, and they stay close enough in to make for some of the most exciting fishing of the year.

Catching it

Mackerel are a pleasure to fish for and forgiving of beginners. Spin off the rocks or a pier with a string of feathers or a small shining lure, casting out and working it back with a steady jigging lift that will often bring up three or four fish at once. Bait pulls them too: sand eel, worm, prawn and shrimp all do the job. Time it for a rising or falling tide around dawn or dusk, when the shoals lift to feed near the surface. The Cornish headlands fish well, from the Padstow area, Port Isaac and Boscastle round to Sennen, the Lizard, St Ives, Mevagissey, Porthleven and Charlestown. The legal minimum is 20cm in the South West (30cm only in the North Sea), though plenty of anglers return anything under about 30cm anyway; measure your catch, keep a few and let the rest swim on.

In the kitchen

Few fish reward fire like a mackerel. Score the flanks, rub them with salt, and lay the fish straight onto a screaming-hot barbecue until the skin chars and the oil-rich flesh firms up: ten minutes, a turn halfway, a squeeze of lemon, done. The other route is the smoker. Hot-smoke fillets over oak chips for fifteen minutes, then flake them warm into a pate with cream cheese, horseradish, lemon and black pepper for the best fish sandwich of the summer. Either way that oiliness wants cutting, so reach for the old English partner: a sharp gooseberry or rhubarb sauce slices clean through the richness.