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

Right place right time take two

For 6-10 weeks most falls, False Albacore visit the coast from Cape Cod to NJ and beyond.  Some years and as well as days are better than others.  That being said,  the last couple of falls have not coincided with lots of hard tails being hooked in my boat.  However, a recent trip to the coast reversed this trend as we managed to pick away most of the day and ended up with a solid number of fish being landed.  many of the takes took place close to the boat which made for some great visual images that were captured by my brain, but not my camera.  I find it so hard to put down the rod when there are fish nearby.  Here are some pics when I managed to put the rod down.

 

Stripahs

Made a run to the coast for some fall saltwater fishing.  Had heard from some friends that the bass were low in numbers but there were a bunch of Albies around.  While there were a bunch of albies there were more boats on the water than ever and everyone was running on the fish and putting them down.  If people wouldn't do that one can really pick at them but alas it wasn't to be so.  Got a ton of smallish bass one day and the next day one albie and one blue.  Despite the less than stellar fishing it was great to be out on the water with friends. 

The Trip (day 4)

Our final day greeted us with overcast skies and no fog.  Yippee.   We headed out and found the birds and fish in the rips which were fueled into large standing waves by the stiff breeze.  My little whaler isn’t the best in these situations so even though we got a small bass we moved off for a drier fishing experience.  We ended up not being able to find any bass but we did find lots of Scup and then big powerful gator bluefish.  The wire leader we happened to have from the muskie made the day special.   

 Diner plate sized Scup

        Mr. Bluefish

               Matt with a big bluefish.  

The large blues fought incredibly hard and gave us cramps in our forearms.  As the tide started to ebb so did the fishing and we were greeted by the looming end of the trip.  In many ways it is the hardest part of the trip knowing that it is ending, that the magic of the last days will be lost to the thousands of mundane day to day things that need to get done in order to keep ones’ life rolling along.  This is quickly followed by talks of the next adventure. 

Montauk

I got a special invite a week ago to hit the famous waters surrounding Montauk.  Although I have a boat it is not up for the trip across Long Island Sound especially if it gets windy.  I tend to stay close to shore and in the more protected water.  After hearing all of the incredible stories of Montauk it was great to finally get to see it in person. That being said it is still fishing and nothing is guaranteed.  We got there mid morning due to fog and there must have been 200 boats ranging from skiff (only a few) to 40 foot cabin cruisers all plying the waters for fish.  We stayed outside a bit hunting for albies and didn't venture towards shore where more bass tend to be found.  The bait was spread out a great deal and we had to work hard for the albies that we found but between the 3 of us we must have hooked 20 albies.  I must admit that I got schooled by my friends who live on the coast and had the correct flies and I did not.  They did offer pity on me and gave me some of the magic flies after letting me flog the water from the bow of the boat for a while.  All in all it was a memorable day and one that I hope to repeat next year.

 

 albie,the inshore rocket ships

 Love the colors of albies

 "Hardcore" hooked up

 The famous point.  If you carefully you can see a guy up to his neck in-front of the guy on the rock.

 The Montauk lighthouse

Back to the salt

 Made the suicide run to the salt for a day trip.  It worked out great but won't likely do it on a Sunday as getting up the next morning is a bit rough.  We hit it hard and found some success but the fishing was slow for us compared to other years.  Despite the slow bit the ocean in fall is a magical place and it sure beats the hell out of working.  

One fish, two fish, red fish, blue fish and a nice one at that

 

 Close up of the business end of this eating machine

More rocket ships

 yours truely