Sight Fishing False Albacore

Little tunny seem to move so rapidly most of the time that sight fishing for them would be next to impossible. However, when their behavior lines up with the right conditions it is in fact possible. Slower cruising fish and the right lighting and it is possible to snipe cruising tunny. I've only hit the right conditions once, and it was this season. It was one of the coolest days I've had fishing for scombrids, though the bite window lasted a mere 20 minutes. For that short time, there were dark clouds in front of me and clear skies behind with the sun right at my back, lighting up the water with exceptional contrast. The tunny were running predictable routes and would break sporadically, but the best shot happened when I could see the fish coming in the water, big pods of 20-30 fish, lit up green and blue in the water. 

I was fishing a white and pink Tabory Snake Fly, hoping I could continue to experiment with that the big, erratic fly strategy. I'd see the fish coming, lay the fly out, and strip it quickly as they approached. I got positive reactions each time, but the fish seemed to have a difficult time engulfing that big deer hair headed fly. The first two that grabbed did so abruptly, peeling away from their pods and side swiping the fly. Neither got steel. The third one did though, and it was such a spectacular and visible take- the best tunny take I've ever had. 

Unlike the previous fish I'd had this one actually was exciting. It felt good in some way other than just exhausted relief. Even better, that joy wasn't taken away by the fish breaking off or coming unbuttoned. Instead it very politely came to hand. 

When I got the fish in I could see that it was light up blue, which made for beautiful photography. However it also had severe abrasions from getting stuck in a net, which didn't. The abrasions were interesting because I've often worried about line burns on released tunny. They don't have thick scales or protective slime the way a lot of fish do and this leaves them vulnerable to infections. Very simply, little tunny evolved to be pelagic and fast, and fast pelagic fish don't naturally get abrasions very often. There's no reason for them to have a mechanism for fighting off the side effects of abrasions. This fish made me a little less concerned about it outright killing them. 

Regrettably I didn't manage to make good on any more shots that day but that fish was worth the price of admission. As tunny season wore on, I'd have some more shots in very different circumstances. It kept me entertained despite the overall slow nature of this year's fishing. There have been some big showing but overall it has been very sparse aside from a handful of windows and pockets of concentrated activity. It has been a long season. It's November and they're still here. And I'm still after the damn things.

Until next time, 

Fish for the love of fish.

Fish for the love of places fish live.

Fish for you.

And stay safe and healthy.

Thank you to my Patrons; Erin, David, John, Elizabeth, Brandon, Christopher, Shawn, Mike, Sara, Leo, C, Franky, Geof, Luke, Streamer Swinger, and Noah for making Connecticut Fly Angler possible. If you want to support this blog, look for the Patreon link at the top of the right side-bar in web version.

One Last Albie for the Year

This was the year where albies good and truly saved the year. The spring and fall inshore striper fishing has been spotty and the mid sized fish just aren't around. The big bluefish have been pretty much absent. And, as has been the case with the past few years, bonito have maintained their steady decline. Albies though came in right on time, chowed down like the maniacs they are and then simply refused to leave. On Tuesday the best albie bit of the year in CT or RI happened at Watch Hill. I wasn't there. Mark Alpert and I were further east, at the West Wall. We had a bite, but it was not a particularly spectacular bite. We were forced to work. 

Working and putting up with the seagull crap smell and cold wind eventually payed off for me at the very end of the wall. I hooked up on a blind class with a little grey clouser. The fish immediately charged off in the direction of a lobster pot and I feared the worst, I lost the last albie I hooked on the wall to a lobster pot back in September. I was able to turn the fish but it then decided to take me all the way around the tip of the wall and into the channel side. That long run exhausted it though and I finished the battle there. There it is, my first West Wall albie and at this point, with daytime temps falling below 40, almost certainly my last false albacore of the 2017 season.

Our bite window lasted about another 45 minutes at the wall before the fish decided they had had enough. Mark got damn close but wasn't able to hook up. We went west, hoping to fin striped bass an albies along the beautiful South County shoreline. We found some real bonafide fall blitzes. The gulls were going crazy an so were the school bass. It was a blast. If there had been a south wind things would have really popped there.

It's early November. The cold nights are here, the fall run is tapering off. It is not yet over, but the end is in sight, so any day when the fish are still around and blitzing cannot be taken for granted.

Cape Cod and RI 2 Day Trip, Pt. 1: West Wall

I'm back! It was a great trip. Not he best fishing in the world, far from it, but really quite unique and full of firsts for both Noah and I. Enough happened and there was so much variety that a single post really won't do it, so I'm braking it up into a few different posts. 

We left Saturday morning in some seriously think fog, and after an hour and a half's drive later very little of the conditions had changed. In fact we were buried in a thick fog until well after we left our first fishing location, which just happens to be probably the most famous shore albie fishing location in New England, the West Wall. There, at the mouth of Point Judith Pond, is a long breakwater that provovides both a bait holding structure and a casting platform on a stretch of shoreline where getting albies and bonito from the natural shoreline would be very difficult otherwise, especially fly casting. 

Reports hadn't been great, but I was keen to see and fish the Wall since it would be my first time. I like knowing what I'm in for rather than being thrown into the action without knowing what the deal is in a spot, and an early visit to this spot, before the action really hits, would be smart. That's pretty much what we got. There were albies around in good number right when we got there, but it was very much unlike any albie fishing I'd done before. There were never any concentrated blitzes. We were just blind casting and hoping some unseen wandering false albacore would find our offerings.

Noah hooked into an albie on one of his first casts! Unfortunately his fish popped off very late in the fight. Not long after I hooked a fish too. Mine was very badly behaved, going straight for a buoy. It wrapped around the line and very easily broke off. That was disappointing.

Noah ended up getting a second opportunity, which he did not let slip away. I unfortunately, did not get that second chace.

It was a fairly busy day on the wall, there were a ton of other fly and light tackle anglers there hoping to catch one of the greatest fish in the Northeast. I was crowded but it was also fun. Nobody was being rude, all the guys I met were just good company, we chatted, joked, and just had a good time while waiting to get our rods bent and half and reels given the most grueling of tests. I liked it. It may not always be like that, but my first taste of the West Wall did nothing but leave me wanting more.

After a very long while with no action at all for anybody, we moved on to our second part of the trip. This one being very, very different from the rest. I got to visit a place I've wanted to see for years.