Okay, they objectively aren't, though little tunny certainly not as intelligent as many Northeast anglers like to think. But this was a very irritating season for mostly land based CT light tackle guys like myself, who have somewhat limited schedules. My work during this tunny season was not conducive to targeting those fish at all, but was great for striped bass fishing which I enjoy more anyway. And they just weren't around thick for long, and not at all in the places I needed them to be. Sure, Cape Cod and Montauk had it pretty good. But CT just f'n sucked and RI was only great in brief fits and spurts, which I missed. The fishing reports overstated the quality of the fishing as usual, things were just strange, and you can be forgiven if you felt frustrated and lost... though I wasn't particularly, I personally predicted this season might be a complete no-show in CT and it wasn't that bad.
I never had a shot at an albie in RI this year, I'm positive none of the thousand or so casts I made in that state this year got in front of any. I saw them on two days, biblical feeds on one of those days, but not at all within range. Mostly I burned gas fruitlessly, stood on beaches and jetties and cliffs feeling like a fool, and some might say wasting time and money that I could have put towards stripers and smallmouth with far better results.
I got one shot and one... well, I don' know what to call the second thing, but one shot in CT this year. It was a workday. Ian told me he was heading out east that day and though I knew I couldn't make it out for the whole trip, I called him when I left work and we decided on a place to meet. about an hour later I was in a parking lot next to a small beach in Eastern CT, when my phone rang. "I found them, I'll be right over". He didn't have far to go. Ian had found a school working an eddy behind the adjacent point, and had already gotten a 10 pounder. Soon I was hopping aboard and we headed over to where the fish were working. They were patternable, working a clear circuit, and eventually I did get a cast in them and had one boil on and refuse the fly. That was my one shot in CT this year. The tunny soon spread out as the tide slowed, and Ian and I found some bass to play with.
A few days later I was fishing for bass when I encountered something highly anomalous. I was in a back bay with two bridges between where I was and the open sound, at low outgoing, when a pod of albies came blasting in through the channel. They followed the large Gamechanger I had tied on nearly to the bank but were much too small to fit it in their mouths. I changed up but couldn't get a good cast in them again. That strange situation summed up the strange season pretty well. It's November 6th. I got an albie on November 7th in 2017, but that's not happening this year. This is the first year since 2016 that I haven't caught one.
Until next time,
Fish for the love of places fish live.
Fish for you.
And stay safe and healthy.
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