Playing Hide and Seek

Every year, as fall approaches, my fishing buddies and I find ourselves along the New England coast chasing the infamous fall run.  The magic of witnessing huge bait balls being torn apart by busting predators fills our dreams.  While this does happen, it is not always our experience, as we're a bunch of working guys, who can only get away for a couple of weekend days on the water.  To find that experience takes luck and being on the water at the right time, some years we're there and other years we end up playing hide and seek with the fish.

This past weekend was the later.  Early last week, reports from all along the coast were glorious.  Tons of bait and plenty of albies, bass and blues.  Then Friday it all changed.  From Cape Cod through Long Island Sound everything changed.  We arrived Saturday and put in our time, searching old haunts as well as new water in search of fish.  We were not alone.  All the other boats were doing the same thing.  All one can do in these situations is find some bait, hang out and hope that the predators show up.  We fished hard and managed to land a few well earned fish.  The pods of albies we did find appeared to be small pods of 2-4 fish that would blow through for a few minutes only to never be seen again.  We got some so so shots and were not sure of what they were feeding on.  They can be easy to get to take or very finicky depending on circumstances.  Fish with quarter sized eyes can easily spot something that doesn't look like food can be as challenging as the browns in a spring creek.  So we kept on changing flies until we got lucky.  Being grateful to land a couple of fish, makes those days were they come fast and easy oh so special.

 Moon set Saturday morning 

 

One of the crazy houses you see along the coast. 

Not too shabby of a house.

 The target species in hand

  Love the coloration of albies.  While not the most impressive looking fish the power and speed that they have is something that has to be experienced in order to be fully understood and appreciated.  No fresh water fish comes even close in terms of speed or power. 

Built for speed