False Albacore in LISound

• Soft plastics score points on false albacore in Long Island Sound. (By Tom Migdalski)
• Albies will clobber jerkbaits, particularly when cast at the "heat of the moment." The seven-mile run “across the pond” didn’t take long on glassy seas and the sunny, calm conditions were perfect for spotting busting fish. Friends Albert Buchman and Mike Kai joined me for a rather civilized 1 p.m. launch out of Waterford, Connecticut, and we crossed eastern Long Island Sound, a deep, tide-swept stretch of water, with nothing more than a ferryboat wake to navigate.
• Our first stop was a small rip near Orient Point on the North Fork of Long Island, and we hadn’t even come off plane when white water erupted up ahead on the uptide side of the rip line. “Albies!” yelled Albert Buchman over the outboard’s growl. He pointed off the starboard bow while tightening his grip on the console rail.
• “See the birds?” A knot of terns worked the surface about 300 yards away, and as we approached the rip we could see the metallic flashes of feeding fish. Powering down, I swung us upcurrent of the froth and cut the motor well outside casting range. “I don’t want to spook ’em,” I replied to Mike’s inquisitive look. “Grab your rods, guys. We’re gonna drift into ’em fast.”
• Soft plastics score points on false albacore in Long Island Sound. Because the fish were feeding along a rip, which concentrates and holds forage in one area, the pod stayed up longer than they would in open water. That gave us a chance to drift into the strike zone and test unweighted soft-plastic jerkbaits, which many albie-chasers now swear by. The jerkbaits plopped amid the marauding school. I cranked my reel for a few turns while twitching the rodtip overhead to create a deadly, injured-bait action. I felt an abrupt tug, and then the spool spun like a tire on ice.
• Al and Mike had simultaneous hookups and instantly their lines crossed. Al, in a keen balancing display, ran alongside the gunnel, ducked under Mike’s rod and maneuvered around the bow with his rod bent double and held way off to the side. Unfortunately, Mike’s line was soon hit by another fish and parted. After ten minutes of give-and-take, our two remaining albies began cork-screwing under the boat—a sure sign of fatigue—while our forearms vibrated from their fiercely beating tails. Soon we pumped the little tunas up from the depths, and Mike deftly tailed them for us. After a few fast photos we plunged them back into the steely green water.
• Matching Does Not Guarantee Catching: In the Northeast, you must fish an artificial or fly that closely resembles what albies are feeding on. But matching does not always guarantee catching. Traditional false albacore lures include flat and elliptical lures such as 3&frasl8- to 3&frasl4-ounce Kastmasters and Hopkins jigs, which imitate baby bunker and butterfish, or long and thin lures like Deadly Dicks and Need-L-Eels, which imitate silversides, anchovies and sand eels. The smaller the metal lure the better. But the problem with matching the hatch is that a little, shiny lure is just one of thousands of small, shiny objects moving among large schools of baitfish. Most of the time the tin is simply overlooked. Frustrated anglers have discovered that larger lures can pay off at times, particularly the soft-plastic jerkbaits that are a staple among striper fishermen. They can be deadly on albies.
• Albie school ravaging bait at the surface.
• Strangely, the most productive soft plastics look nothing like the tiny baitfish the albies usually target. The reason for their tremendous success is probably due to their amazingly lifelike crippled prey appearance, which triggers an instinctive attack by albies.
• Retrieves and Rigging: The key is to fish them without added weight while the fish are blasting baits on top. By twitching the rodtip while retrieving, you get that “walk-the-dog” action that looks like a stunned or crippled baitfish, and looks like an easy mark to a hungry albie. The drawback is that these unweighted plastic baits don’t cast very far, which is a good reason to position your boat upwind of a school on a breezy day. In a pinch, you can add a splitshot or two, a small bullethead sliding sinker, or one of the new hook-weighting systems made expressly for soft-plastic baits
• A variety of soft plastics rigged unweighted and weighted. Whichever way you add weight to a soft plastic, do this only when conditions call for it, whether it be wind, or just a pod of fish that seems to be boat-shy and stays just outside the limited casting range that soft plastics allow. To be sure, on calm days when the fish are picky, unweighted plastics seem to produce best.
• Soft plastics come in a wide variety of shapes, colors and sizes. A standard 4-inch bait, particularly one that imitates a minnow with a forked tail, is the most effective. Because albies rise to corral baitfish at the surface and are accustomed to looking upward at their forage (thus keying on the white undersides) I’ve found that colors such as pearl, white, silver and any of the multitude of similar shades are among the hottest colors.
• Above all, make sure to switch out your lure often. Soft plastics are not indestructible, and if clipped short or torn around the head so that it slides down and “bunches up” near the hook bend, it is shot. And be sure to rig a lure straight and true so that it rides straight in the water, without twisting. Top-rated soft-plastic hooks include super-sharp Gamakatsu and Owner Cutting Point in a wide-gap, offset-worm in size 2/0 and 3/0 with a black finish. There are more brands popping up all the time.
• As far as rigging goes, I tie on 18 inches of 20-pound-test fluorocarbon leader and tie on my lure with a loop knot for freedom of movement. A small, black snap-swivel on the main line makes changing lure/leader combos fast and easy.
• Tackle-wise, you’ll need a light outfit to cast unweighted soft plastics to albies. Choose a high-capacity spinning reel with a good drag system and match it to a 6 1&frasl2- to 7 1&frasl2-foot, medium/light-action graphite rod. Anglers are slowly discovering that rods up to 8 feet in length can aid in the distance department; however, that advantage seems to be more likely on windless days. Fill your reel with 10- to 12-pound mono, or, better yet, 20-pound braided line for maximum distance.
• Albacore Alley: False albacore, nicknamed “apple knockers” in some parts of the Northeast because they arrive when the apples ripen and drop, are officially called “little tunny” and were once considered a trash fish in the region. Now, however, albies are highly prized light-tackle fish, and command much attention each fall. From late August through October, countless pods of apple knockers gather along a chain of small landmasses at the mouth of Long Island Sound. This stretch of water, locally known as “albacore alley,” holds fish like clockwork each autumn while other regional spots remain hit-and-miss. These structures start at Watch Hill, Rhode Island, and run southwesterly along New York’s Fishers Island, Great Gull and Little Gull islands, Plum Island and end at Orient Point. Famous rips as the Race, the Sluiceway and Plum Gut are bottlenecking waters that surge from depths of over 300 feet to less than 30 feet in spots.
• Spotting fish along Albacore Alley is one thing, hooking and landing one is quite another. Hunting albies generally entails cruising likely stretches—usually along the uptide side of rips or within several hundred yards of rocky shorelines—searching for breaking fish and diving terns and gulls.
• Unweighted jerkbait fooled this surface-breaking fish.
• “Birds working are a prime indicator of albies,” says Ned Kittredge, a top Southern New England charter captain, “but not always. Many times the fish are present, and the only signs are fish breaking. So you have to look carefully, especially in rough water.” “They feed differently than bluefish because they simply swim faster. Bluefish rise vertically and make circular splashes while albies feed in an undulating travel pattern and make diagonal or slashing breaks. Albies pop up in one spot, vanish and then are almost instantly 50 or 100 yards away while bluefish generally stay at home.
• Once you locate a pod of fish, your first option is to run to the school and make a quick cast or two before it moves or settles. At times you’ll keep the boat on plane just to stay with a fast-feeding cluster, which can top 25 miles per hour. This technique, called the “run-and-gun,” is most successful with larger schools that remain in one spot for more than a few minutes.
• Like the run-and-gun, the drift technique involves cruising into an area where fish are breaking, and then cutting the motor and waiting in a promising spot, often uptide of a rip line, until the fish resurface. The idea is to let the randomly moving school come to you. “I like to approach a school from upcurrent and off to one side,” says Capt. Kittredge. “I position the boat so my anglers can cast a soft-plastic or heavier lure if the situation warrants, across and slightly upcurrent and retrieve the lure at a moderately slow speed. With the engine off, the boat drifts into casting range in stealth mode. At times albies can be extremely boat shy, but when they are feeding heavily almost nothing bothers them and they may pop up right next to you.”
• The albies cooperated during our afternoon last fall, and the three of us had over 30 hits on soft plastics and landed about five fish each, an unusually high number, which we attributed to using soft plastics. Subsequent trips proved their superiority over tins, and once the word gets out expect a rush on them in northeastern tackle shops.(October/November 2005 issue of SaltWater Angler)