Surf Fishing in the Nor'easter

I had a damn good year targeting false albacore last year. It was spectacular. I was on them very early in CT, likely being one of the first to catch from the rocks here in 2017. And then I got one on the West Wall on November 7th, which may be one of the latest albies caught there ever. My friend Steve Fiori, who practically lives on the west wall during the bonito and false albacore bite windows, told me he had never heard of anyone getting one that late. Last year was just a special year. My track record was very good. I stuck albies on all but one day targeting them from the rocks. Seriously! Only one trip with no hook ups. I was really damned proud of that. I still am, actually. 2018 has been very different. Very, very different. I got one bonito after a bunch of attempts. Then slogged through the early albie season with no real success. Then I had one decent day with Patrick Barone where we hit a good number of fish on spinning gear and I stuck one on the fly. Fast forward to the window that ends the typical albie season: The last week of October. A big nor'easter was coming, and it seemed big enough that is could muck things up enough to push the albies out... maybe. Last year we had an even bigger storm around the same time and the fish stayed in for another two weeks, in fact some of the best albie bites of the year happened after that storm. Regardless, I was pretty pessimistic about catching even one albie on the fly from the rocks this year in the days leading into this big storm.

Dan and I found ourselves fishing the battered surf zone early Saturday morning, with a stiff 20-30kt wind out of the northeast gusting even stronger, a deep low approaching from the southwest, and big swells sweeping in from the southeast. 40 degrees.
Raining.
Hard.
It should have been good big striper conditions, and indeed they were. Except for one variable I should have take into account: mud.

I did think about that, I always take it into account in the spot we were fishing. But I am generally far more concerned about it with a straight easterly and a higher incoming tide. This tide was obscenely low. It was in stark contrast to the visuals later in the day when roads had to be closed and property was damaged by coastal flooding, not uncommon with these extratropical systems and their broad low pressure areas. The wind was coming of the land, not off the water, so the crashing surf wasn't really something I counted on. Not to the degree that it was occurring that early in the storm.
To avoid prolonging the point any further, we caught diddly squat in that first area. After filling up and drying of slightly we moved west and found out that we should have started there. The tide was ripping around the tip of a jetty and the bass were holding right there, tight to the rocks. Casting barely necessary. Dan and I caught some obscenely fat schoolies there and had just enough time to realize that there were some big fish there before the tide started picking up dead eel grass down the beach and dumping all of it into our spot, ruining our bite.

We found fish in another spot that we could have sat on for a long time, but we didn't. We went looking for albies. Really, for no good reason. But when we saw fish breaking out in the bay as we rigged up I started to actually think we'd have a chance. I didn't have my usual albie arsenal with me so I just threw on a chartreuse clouser. And I started walking out to the spot I jokingly told Dan "Five casts and I'll be into a solid ten or twelve pound albie".

Five casts later, I watched a roughly 10lb false albacore launch near vertically for my chartreuse clouser, and I was on my first shore bound albie of the year. This was my first time getting one on the new-ish 10wt, and it handled that fish more than admirably. I was able to keep it within 120 feet of me at all times. 

So, at worst I can say I ended 2018 with two albies on the fly total and one from shore on the fly. In other words, the total number of albies I got on my first day targeting them last year, and half as many as I got from shore on my first day of targeting them last year. I wish I could do anything other than have a sort of melancholy chuckle about that. 

The albies are not long from being hopelessly absent around here, but the striped bass, and maybe a few bluefish if we are so lucky, are not going to give in for a couple weeks. Tomorrow might be a pretty incredible day for Mark Alpert and I. We shall see.