False Albacore: The Funny Fish

By MICHAEL CARR Images by JAMES MANNING

A false albacore is arguably faster than a bonefish, and I would say ten times prettier as well. Muted blues and greens adorn their bodies along with an individual inky pattern that runs down their backs. They’re aggressive and voracious feeders that appear and disappear seemingly at random across the Northeast.

If you want to find albies, follow the cavalcade of boats constantly running and gunning across the rips as the fish boil and corral bait. But if you really want to find albies, then you have to play their game and understand that there is nothing random about anything they do. They hunt like a wolf pack, and if you’re tough enough and smart enough sometimes they let you run with them.

The shoreline is freckled with boulders as I stand at the boat’s gunwale with my rod tip pointed towards land watching and waiting. I feel like a sentry standing a post in an old movie where, in the next shot, the enemy is going to come careening over the hillside and unleash hell. The coffee is making me jumpy. Or maybe it’s just the adrenaline of having watched them explode and missed my cast only a few minutes earlier.

The pink Surf Candy is dripping on the end of my leader shedding tears from a missed hook up, but we haven’t scattered like all the other boats in the flotilla.

We stayed put, hugging an edge on the screen that showed good structure all around us leading to the shoreline. We were certain to have another shot at them. Or maybe I’d be standing there until the fly went dry?

False albacore plow through bait balls like little freight engines. They don’t slice the bait like bluefish. They don’t bucket-mouth unwitting cull like stripers. They use their hydrodynamic bodies to inhale their prey. They vacuum those tiny fish like a Dyson. Often, you’ll see explosions of fish at the surface during an albie feed because their velocity of attack will send baitfish cartwheeling into air. So, getting them to eat a fly can sometimes be so frustrating, but then you remember that they’re called the “fish of a thousand casts” for a reason.

I watch the water and wait, hoping that the other few boats around didn’t just portion up the bait ball and send the fish scattering. In seconds, the water begins to tremble fifty feet out. It could be albies or it could be a sea monster. Whatever it may be is going to see my size 2 Surf Candy on its nose in a moment. One false cast is sometimes all you get with albies. Fish a heavy sinking line or a sink tip or better yet take a few sticks of dynamite and call it a day.

The surface erupts. The jackwagons in the other boats that raced off see the fish off our stern. I’ll get two or three shots and then it’ll be over again. I send that Candy into the melee of frothy water, stick the rod under my arm and strip with both hands making that Candy move like Charlie swimming away from the unseen shark in Jaws. “Swim Charlie, swim! Don’t look back!”

The line comes tight and all hell breaks loose.

I’ve got fifty feet of fly line around my feet because I was too cool to wear a basket. I can’t remember if I set the drag knob tight enough. But, before I can do anything about any of this, the line is singing through the guides. There’s a V-wake on the water as the line cuts the surface. I hit backing before I can adjust the drag, and all I can think is, “Don’t high-stick this fish, don’t high-stick it.” I keep the rod pointed at the shoreline and slowly begin to gain some line back. It’s a slow, arduous process, but that fish’s speed is no match for a sealed drag and a ten-weight.

Alongside the boat, I keep the rod low, grab the leader then the fishes pelagic tail. One of many photos shows looks of sheer disbelief on my face. Every albie is exactly the same. How the hell did I catch this fish? Every time I land an albie I feel like I’ve just stepped off a roller coaster. Knees are weak.

I definitely feel nauseous and have to pee. And I say to myself, “I’m never going to be unprepared for that fight again.” And yet every other time, I am. There’s no letdown with albies because most of us feel like we’re not supposed to catch these fish, so anytime we do is an ecstatic bonus. Albies are lightning in a bottle.

Chasing false albacore and catching them are two different things. Spin guys and fly guys will argue over retrieves, but for me it’s always been about whatever I can do without looking ridiculous, nervous, and neurotic because that’s what albies do to you. It’s a raging mindset of self-doubt offset by an intense desire to be right. If anyone’s got a recipe for how to break this feeling of six Red Bulls and being lost in an airport, look me up. I’ll be the one trying not to smile too hard for the picture.