Abundant, easy to catch and good to eat: an apt description of the scrappy little Japanese horse mackerel. Records show that the fish has been a Japanese favorite since the Nara Period, over 1,000 years ago, and it still has its aficionados today. Many Japanese anglers pursue this popular fish in preference to any other.
The horse mackerel (Trachurus japonicus), known as ma-aji in Japanese, somewhat resembles the mackerel in appearance but is actually the most common member of the jack family found in Japanese waters. Big eyes, a projecting lower jaw, a square-shaped tail base and a curved lateral line of hard scales called scutes make the horse mackerel easy to identify. There are two physical types of horse mackerel: the deep-bodied, yellowish inshore variety and the darker offshore variety with an elongated body. An average-size fish runs about 20 cm in length.
The techniques and tackle used for catching horse mackerel vary with the size of the fish. In summer and autumn, small and medium-size horse mackerel are caught in large numbers from breakwalls, piers and rowboats. Many anglers use long poles with a small float and a small single hook baited with a tiny shrimplike krill or a piece of sea worm. Others use a string of six to 10 small latex or fish-skin flies called sabiki. The flies are suspended below a plastic, wire or thread-mesh chum holder. Small frozen krill are the most popular chum for this type of angling. When the fish are cooperative, it is common to catch one on every fly, looking like a miniature of the carp banners flown on the Children's Day holiday.