A group of false albacore intellectuals assembles to talk tactics and tackle to optimize our albie fishing success. 

Transcript:

want to welcome you all uh still sharing

not what i wanted share this one

hmm

of course i practiced all this and was working fine so uh start from beginning again

there we go all right well thank you all for uh joining us tonight um um on this uh tackling tactics live um the uh a little bit of latest news here um for uh for all of you um and then we'll uh get into the to the panel um the saltwater edge albe shootout started today it runs through october 10th which is the monday of columbus day weekend uh you can sign up at saltwateredge.com there's a little bit to it of your order number the last couple digits of your order number are your id and then every week we give you a letter so uh it's going to run for six week grades prizes from from shimano from uh vance stahl from sims from costa from orvis whole slew of uh saint croix turtle cove whole slew of great prizes so we look forward to handing those out um those you don't know the american saltwater guide association started a tagging study for albies it's in full swing we raised uh almost a quarter more than a quarter million dollars to purchase um tagging these the tags themselves they're rather expensive not the little spaghetti tags but these more um sophisticated ones and we're tagging around falmouth to nantucket to martha's vineyard where this array is set up to learn more about false albacore this literally almost zero data around false albacore what happens to them how they migrate where they go when they come and go so there's been similar studies in the northeast for bluefin tuna but we kind of borrowed that model and have um started that um and um again focused in that uh on the south side of the cape uh but that's in full swing it'll run uh until we deploy all the tags um also the american saltwater guide association you might have seen the last couple days in your social a lot uh from asga we are petitioning the regional councils to manage false albacore it's not currently it's more like a bait fish um and used uh um commercially for um a lot of the same things menhaden would be used for so it's important game fish certainly to anglers that's why you're here tonight and to guides in their business and shops in my business so um the guide association is getting involved in in in uh asking if these uh this game fish be managed uh a lot like the other ones are hopefully better than a lot of the other ones but managed um and the road on state record was either caught today or yesterday i saw it in the dem website weighed 12 pounds 12 ounces and a total of 29 inches i'll give you a look at it

um

there we go um pretty long looking fish um and uh this guy's from massachusetts and i understand it was today or perhaps yesterday but i saw it in dem today um so let's get on with the show um i want to use our wisdom panel um and uh really thank these guys in advance for uh contributing their time and expertise um the first one is uh michael plation's light bite chatter charters um out of on sort of the um western uh uh connecticut sounds board member connecticut board member of the american saltwater guide associations um there he is mike thank you for uh your time and expertise um you guide where would you where would you describe the area that you guide mostly uh western long island sound kind of anywhere from the throgs neck bridge out to about new haven so that covers some water sure sure have you seen any albums yet this year no no i usually i mean it's later for you guys right yeah it's like usually like i've seen listen the earliest i've ever seen him is uh last like right about now last week or august um that was probably 20 years ago uh now usually again i'm right around september 15th to the 25th is kind of when they show and they hang they hang until end of october kind of thing first week in november yeah depends camps you know usually they're out of there like when the water temps hit about 60 yeah over great random ones floating around even later than that every now and again you'll run into them pleasant surprise so um next member of the panel is uh alec this picture's super old i apologize but i scoured the internet i could either chose this one of you from 15 years ago i feel like i took that picture i remember that day we stitched together but i can either do that or apparently the same alex prue is a pretty good soccer player too in the premier league so i could have used that picture but i i went with this so uh alec peru is joining us um he's the better the albie snack um and uh you know somebody had to think of this great lure that works for stripers as well as uh false albacore as well as stripers so that was alec he's now busy with uh his zip disc and uh there's a free pre-placed pre-product plug there but he's a hardcore uh shore angler i know uh i've heard you know i know you fish a lot in connecticut but i know you make it up to the cape and and all the places in between so have you uh bumped into some false albuquerque yet this year i have yeah um i took a couple day trip out to nantucket um um about 10 days ago and got a new car there for sure um trying to get those first ones but it sounded like they showed up on the cape you know that mid cape like right when i was out there and even in more numbers it was kind of slim pickings when i fished for them so i got a couple under my belt this year but um

the best is yet to come oh absolutely yeah the last member of the wisdom panel is uh my buddy jack sprengel east coast charters here in rhode island um shimano pro staff and and certainly one of rhode island's uh most talented anglers i say that because um it could be carp it could be yellowfin it could be albie's uh he's been in this game for a long time and uh along with being talented he's quite generous uh thank you so much for joining us today um today it is one of your favorite game fish that's your favorite fisherman in this picture for sure oh right there huh eric said he thought you had an albie yeah there it is that's great that's great thanks a bunch for joining us jack thank you all right so um i put together um a bunch of slides not a bunch you know maybe um 16 18 slides to give us some framework but i really want to pull these guys in to comment as we go um and you have also i have uh will poston on the line as our sort of uh co-host here he's gonna be looking at the chats and feeding me um questions that we want to um be sure and answer um the uh let me just take a look what might be there now uh nothing oh good good um i'll let you manage that thanks will um so it's actually um you know we talk about little tuna and all that kind of stuff there false up of course actually member of the mackerel family um and it certainly reeks of speed when you have one in your hand it feels like one hydrodynamic muscle it's got retractable dorsal fins depression is where the pectoral fins um fold in psych its tail cycles is 60 times a second it's warm blooded no swim bladder tiny teeth and feed like wolves and i'll show you mike lapto a diving a free diving photographer had a couple of encounters with baltz albacore and that was his takeaway it was how they kind of feed in wolf packs and i'll show you a drone video later that kind of shows that uh from on high but uh this is what they might look like and here they are down at the bottom when we see so much of the action on the surface that's what we focus on here they are at the bottom of uh i think this was um um off of jamestown here in rhode island um whoops missed one

ah let's see not sure how to go backwards not gonna risk it um that was a um um they certainly have a range from uh you know north carolina and palm beach for a couple populations but uh from jersey up into the i guess it was a couple in uh even a couple years ago there's one tiny one in uh in the um uh merrimack river up in um up in newburyport so northern massachusetts but most of the range south of the cape through um through uh through jersey um but you know when you're trying to find them that's one of the one of the challenges here certainly early in this season you know looking for for edges looking um where you know the more uniform a place is the less likely it is to hold uh to hold albies they want an edge whether it's uh drop off or uh whether it be it sand or rock or um you know maybe a change in in in flow like out of a breach way or something like that they want to leverage that physical advantage that they have which is really speed and feeding in a wolf pack and then the other challenge obviously is finding the food um but the best albie edges seem to be deep to shallow i use look at this one here uh at fort adams uh this is fort adams with a jazz fest and all that happens in newport um and this is a drop-off even here at castle hill i unders it's a hundred feet offshore it's 180 feet deep that kind of depth gives them a place to to corral the bait and use their speed and um and hunting ability to their advantage there's plenty other places i just wanted an example to illustrate um but they also like edges where fast meets slope for example and the surface itself is another edge they'll drive the bait to the surface and um you know i think um in a lot of cases we see this kind of feeding and that's what people focus on but i would bet our panel would would uh would would agree there's often a good deal going on uh below the surface jack and mike you both you know fish with fish finders something that alec and i from the shore don't have uh access to but what do you typically see when you see uh surface feeding what's the what's the rest of the story it might go first uh you know funny thing is we i see him once in a while on sonar um yeah they have to be pretty thick but they come through you'll mark them every now and again if you're out deep uh most of our fish though i mean alex knows too i mean i met alex years ago westport outfitters like a zillion years ago um and you know a lot of our waters like you said they like deep water but where they congregate for us a lot of the time are the shells so you i always tell people they kind of hang out with proximity to deep water they'll come in shallow three four five feet of water and feed but there should be 30 feet of water really close by that they can get back out there and move around and then come like circle around back deep a lot of areas in my neck of the woods that's kind of how it is we don't as i don't know if you know but alex i'll tell you we don't have a lot of sand yeah we have like all rocks and very few how deep is the western sound in places yeah we got it a little over 200 feet in some spots okay north shore uh heading across uh there's a couple spots out there 180 190 210 but for the most part it's it's drop off to shallow and that's where they're gonna um yeah so in my neck of the woods you know if you're if you're sitting anywhere near you know 20 30 feet of water and there's you know five to ten feet of water near it that's where they seem to push the bait the bait kind of rides up the wall then goes in shallow to try to hide and they come in and feed on them and then scoot right back out so they could run in shallow you get a couple shots and then they're back out on that ledge and you'll see them skipping around the ledge and then they'll dart back in and out again you know you talk about your 29 incher that you got somebody got yesterday the day before i think it was 2017 i got a 28-incher and a mud flat three feet three feet of water 100 yards to my dock

i thought it was snapper blue fish i mean it's just how it goes so they can be everywhere and anywhere in our neck of the woods uh they don't really they're congregating some hot spots but you know sort of the boat so go out and find deep how about you jack yeah it's interesting hearing some of the specific numbers that mike was saying i always encounter them near drop-offs but again i have run into them in a very different look far offshore well 35 miles offshore i run into false albuquerque one very large big like half beats and frigate mackerel i've watched them eating very large baits uh same amount of depth though when he said when his maximum depth about 190 200 feet um in the same scenario with the drop-offs i've actually had these fish uh two seasons back my friend eric and i were always up at the hurricane barrier in providence hammering these things right up against the barrier most people are throwing bluefish poppers at them we recognize what they wear right away and had a phenomenal day the same deals significant drop off there they got access to deep water there's a large food source that'll get up in there and they were making good use of that tighter confined area with the access to the deeper water um i do mark them if i'm in the mud hole and i'm out there looking for bluefin tuna sometimes we're dropping jigs and these guys will actually whack a full-size bluefin tuna jig i do find that they act very different they feed a little more aggressively in open water a little bit easier to target in that deeper water than they are when they get up along the coast they get a little bit more finicky moving faster covering more ground laterally than they are vertically in the water column but i have encountered these fish pretty far offshore and some significantly deeper water as well but question for you jack when you're offshore those surface feeds last longer yes they are far less shy offshore in the deeper water than they are when they're in that tight skinny water i think they're a little more susceptible to predation themselves when they're in tighter um and they feel like they can't get away i don't know it's just my opinion i don't know what they're thinking but they do seem a little bit more skittish and they're covering a lot more ground when they're in that shallow water than they do out in the deep water the deep water they'll come up and whack a nine inch squid bar yeah and we're throwing you know size two and four hooks at them on fly rods you know lou and i on hot wheels uh we used to chum bluefin in the mud hole and we would catch a lot of bluefin doing that and every now and then we would just get absolutely swarmed with these things and they wouldn't leave the boat and they would just sit down and jump slick and absolutely crush any kind of jig we threw in the water or alby snacks ron z's any kind of soft bait that you wanted to drop very effective it is interesting how much different they behave when they get into that shallow water they found more wolf packs than they do that large feeding school behavior so alex you know you're on the rocks a lot and you get you know more limited shots there's not 190 feet below you um so it's i i'm going to assume it's that drop off an edge is is what you're kind of looking for in a scenario when you said when you when you figure out where to spend your time absolutely yeah no that's that's absolutely key um just to touch on some of the jack said you know too it is it is smart always to bear in mind that you know the fish that we're feeding that we're targeting they are at times you know their prey themselves you know and you see that a lot with the stripers right now with a lot of the sharks around so you know you can't discount the fact that these fish uh aren't always the top of the food chain although you're you're trying to catch them when they're in predator mode they're in prey mode a lot of times too so you have to bear that in mind there's a lot a lot to be said for that especially the striper fishing i've been doing recently i've been seeing that um

i'm sorry sharks on them yeah yeah but but the uh the albies yeah i mean fishing from shore i'm always looking for as deep a water you could find it's close enough to shore you know as you could as you can get it because that is a firm believer and they're going to want to have um that deep water to go back to after they're feeding you know or even when they're feeding as well also think that deep water when you're on shore that's probably hard structure in a lot of cases they can force the bait there and use it as one of their edges that they're gonna feed on you know i think for me um that navionics app is a great help in trying to find the even the little places you know because um that corralling of the bait and um and maybe it's what in fact like uh mike lapp to observe them operate more like a wolf pack on the inshore and less so in the uh more in the deeper water like uh jack's experienced um you know the other thing is certainly uh in trying to find fish there's some clues from above you know bigger albies are generally feeding on smaller baits so some um in turns will feed on the smaller baits but the gulls you know often don't bother um uh with albie's or at least the bait albies are chasing like anchovies it's not worth the effort um but they but the turn certainly dude you guys have any observations in terms of birds how they're moving what type um in terms of uh maybe helping to identify a albie's maybe from bluefish or something like that any thoughts there good jack or alex which i think the goals um the regular seagull that you normally see they're they're almost always on bluefish or small bass something feeding slower you know moving through the water just kind of creating more chaos the turns are almost the algaes of the bird world they're eating the same kind of thing they're up and down fast they're they're looking for the smaller bait and they're pushing stuff moving quicker so that you kind of find them together um it seems they're they're faster you know they catch they i'm keeping up with them the goals aren't gonna yeah exactly when they zag the the turns can keep up the goals just like black back goals though i've seen those i don't know if you guys have seen that too but it's like those smaller black back or laughing goals they're on them yeah laughing laughing also is a good one

we see the goals on them down here um what i tell people is you know turns are usually the dead giveaway and you can tell their body language you know what they're kind of after um when they're with the albies they're very um erratic you know they're they're dipping up and down their wing they're constantly turning and kind of flicking their wings really fast and zipping down and then hovering again blue fish they you know they're similar but they kind of they're a little more lazy about uh you know dropping down on some feeding bluefish because they could lose feet um but what we see here is the gulls sit on the water like the big gulls they'll just sit and they sit right over them and you'll see the you'll see the gulls get up and they'll fly like 20 feet and sit they keep putting their heads down and they know where those fish are and they just keep hopscotching around and they're picking up whatever little pieces that get floated to the top um or they stick their head down and get some pieces but a lot of times i've done real well seeing like 20 30 gulls just sitting in the water go right go blow right through go right through the middle of them then turn around and and watch because usually as you go through you turn in the bait up too the goals kick off they get back up in the air and start looking and that's when they they tell you well you're a little off they're actually a little you know up 50 yards off to the right because the girls will get up and fly and hover and then sit back down on them again so they kind of follow them around and sit on top of them they might be sitting on the bait ball and you're pecking at it you wonder if the gulls are hoping they're blue fish yeah exactly well there's a few girls out here missing feet the um so let's um that's a little bit about finding them let's move on to uh tackle considerations you know the angle is going to need to cast all day and this is try to put this together whether it's a fly rod or or or or spin you know but you're going to cast all day so you want to keep the gear light um the reel has to have a fast retrieve regardless of fishing method uh certainly distance is a consideration you know certainly um casting jigs you're gonna have more distance than you might with a fly rod but the point is um you know to uh to to um operate with an outfit that will max and help you maximize your distance and i just didn't think i should let three people off the line without having a mini floral mono debate you know because it seems to be a regular question you know um so um from uh let's start with the fly guy um uh mike i know you do both but i mean you have a um deep experience there what uh what's your kind of basic setup for for for albie's um on the fly i stick with nine weights i mean if you got a calm day you know you can throw the eight um nine for a shore angler or boat anglers pretty light setup um you can still beat the wind with it because as everybody knows you know it's the fall and you know you never get you know well you know it's not like you never get them but how many really calm days do you get out there don't have the wind blowing in your face or over the wrong shoulder so you know nine weight um if it's real really blowing through the 10 if it's a calm day you can get away with the eight let's stick with the nine foot leader um yeah i i don't really find that the fluro makes that big of a difference for him how about the uh what line do you use most commonly from a boat is it a full sink or is it what's the what's your choice there we're using intermediates like 99 of the time so you know i think there's opportunity that we forget because we get so keyed in on those surface feeds that were you know we're dancing around the boat like look at they're blowing up but you forget that the ones that are blowing up there's probably double the amount underneath them yeah put it put a 350 grain on and then drop it just underneath them and take a slow strip through them yeah fast because the ones down below are picking up the pieces at the one stop or dropping down so they're just kind of swimming around milling getting what they can get nice and easy and i've seen it a lot you know out in the middle even after like the main blow-ups are over um you'll see some like stragglers that will hang behind and play cleanup yeah love me some stragglers the uh jack and i were uh jack and i were offshore together earlier this week and i had an intermediate uh they were fishing for mahi and i had an intermediate line it just didn't settle enough and i was like just kicking myself because the feed was great and uh i just didn't have a line that put me in it you know and so you're right you may stick with an intermediate but it's a good idea to put a single sometimes even have both you know be ready in deeper water for a heavier line yeah like it's like a 350 grain and i think nine foot liter you know it's plenty um you know get it down i i like anywhere between i like about 16 pounds some guys go less i get it um i don't think you really need it i mean when you think about like you know what what jack said i mean they're hitting spreader bars they'll hit chuggers they'll hit cedar plugs you know and that's on what 100 you know 80 pound test 100 pounds good point good point yeah maybe not right i mean i get it uh and i i don't disagree that sometimes you have to go lighter sure but i i think the reason they don't hit is because of pressure you know all the knuckleheads running their boats around and i you know like bass you know peter you know like you can get a bass follow a plug right to the boat right before it turns now to albies will do the same thing i mean how many times you've got albies around the boat like three feet off the side of you going bananas um they come around yeah um and i think what happens is why they start getting picky is people start disrupting the bait and the bait balls so they're shattering the bait and then the fish kind of thin out on that bait if you can just you know not going into boat handling but you know if you don't you just kind of calm and drift along and drift well past and then come around again they'll usually kind of stay put give you the opportunities and you know i i mean we catch them on top water plugs it's silly that you know people think you got to go down to you know uh eight pound fluoro to get them you know i think 20 pound is plenty especially if you want to put a little heat on them and get them in and get to because you know that game is too they're up and down so damn fast you want to get you want to get one released and another one you know on the line so yeah bring a man the better yeah alec um you know from your shore experience what's the typical setup for you uh these days i'm learning a long leader and uh yeah 20 to 20 something like that 30 even 30 pound leader to 20 pound braid 15 if i you know if i uh need the casting distance but uh yeah i'm not overall i'm not a huge huge believer in line shyness whatsoever for any species not to get into like a line shyness thing but i've i've caught a bunch of albies maybe close to half of my alleys during a time in my life when i use no leader at all you know time braid direct which might sound a little funny but it's skinny braid you know 15 or 12 braid is virtually invisible so um but i i you know mono i use floral just just for uh i don't know that little bit of extra confidence i guess you know because i i i think anything you can do to make you cast better present more um more confidently is your best as a sure guy what do you do about distance see what what's the setup for um like rod length and i'm using like an eight-foot rod you know and a lot of guys are into fast action rods you know where the tip ends but i like something where you can feel the whole rod bend you know you can really load it up and get the most that you can out of the whole thing so i like more of a you know a parabolic or a slower action rod does that kind of action help throw a snack versus the jig i would say i would say without a doubt and because the whole thing's flexing it allows you to cast i think more accurately at all distances and you know if there's one say you want to fire one out there low you want to get there quickly but you only want to make a half distance cast you can kind of laser a low one real good i think it just gives you a lot of a lot more control over your over your cast you're kind of more defined the whole thing is flexing yeah eight foot medium action yeah i mean it it they don't make anything these days it's medium but go feel them you know you know uh find something that maybe i i don't like anything that's too crazy tippy which is kind of where the rods are progressing to these days but right jack how about you interesting both guys made interesting points uh with regard to the way the fish feed uh mike was saying really what mike was saying is stop running the damn fish over and let it happen if you let those fish feed and you let that crescendo build you could probably have a steel leader on and they'd hit it because that you it's the same exact thing with false albacores it is with bluefin tuna as it is with the elephant if you let that nature happen you don't disrupt the bait and what's going on you mean you saw it with yellowfin the other day throwing top water with me and if you let it happen you let it build then you can get in there you get your shots and everybody can get tight on it you know i think leader matters more when there's fewer number of fish the bait is a little more scarce they're you know it's not super abundant and they're not feeding mindlessly um they're in skinnier water than i i do actually use the same pound test these guys are using i'm using 15 or 20 pound i like fluorocarbon yeah it has refractive index if you keep it clean um it does allow light to pass through it so it doesn't have those light rays sticking out of it that mono does you'll see that scuba diving you know mono does bend light um but fluorocarbon also has a little bit of a stiffer profile that i like it's keeping my bait straight um and it's also allowing me to have a little bit more chaff resistance if i am hitting the tail uh someone like alex who's throwing a plastic or a soft bait it's probably more advantageous for him with romano because he's going to get a little more action out of it too for the same reason he wants that softer rod i will say i'm very partial to jigs metal stuff like that uh i've always been a you know back in the day it was swedish pimples and deadly dicks for me and then um current sniper jig came out and that that became my go-to because i could mix that up between sea bass jig and turn around fire it out at alby's coming by and then you know alby snacks sluggos ron z's you can't beat soft and soft feels real they're gonna hold on to it better and it just moves better than anything metal unless you're making a fly maybe and something with some hair might move just as well but might not feel as good as soft baits yeah excellent i mean it is i heard a couple of themes you know it's uh that you know not really leader shy um think about your presentation is it sinking slowly under the school or are you burning it across the surface really fast those things have a big impact on too yeah more than yeah more than a gear um so there's certain they're a couple of facts 35 30 percent faster than bonefish wheels got to handle long runs and a turn and burn smooth startup fast retrieve those would be considerations for the real um there's a lot of good examples out there um and uh won't dive into that as it relates to to spin and fly but those are the criteria you think of um most anguished tie direct might use a non-slip monoloop or an improved clinch you know most baits swim straight so that might be a reason but i would curious surveying you guys um you know i think alec minimized the hardware to the maximum degree going grade direct but um most you guys loop guys or do you have any thoughts on on a couple of the knots that um you want to use on a you know might be a light tackle answer in general but as it relates to albies any thoughts on on um you know from the group i'm a palomar to my jigs but if i'm fishing a plastic like an i'll be snack or something i want a little bit more action i'm a i'm a non-slip loop guy for sure zero snap swivels i'm uh with all these guys on no hardware i'm not a hardware fan

not the same for you guys i'm tying i'm tying direct with a loop not all the time every every time i mean yeah just trying to get that most action i mean um just to go back to the uh the tackle real quick one thing i wanted to mention i kind of recently in the most recent years upgraded to like the um you know we would call like the the top tier reels you know like the the little stella the inshore stuff and i i you were talking about casting distance i think one of the big things that can't be uh you know overstated is you know the the better the line layers on those things the closer the lip of the spool you can load that light braid and if you can just be casting right off the edge without getting wind knots especially from shore when it's you know you can't pick the direction you're gonna be approaching these fish from so you could have a wind coming off your left or your right um couldn't agree more yeah get to get that i wish i'd done it sooner i wish i'd done it sooner yeah so you're saying even the little bit of lip that you might you know maybe you bugged up some line and and cut it off and tied on a did your your leader do uh braid uh you're going to trade off distance on the friction coming off the the lip is that is that what i'm hearing a lot of that entry level stuff it loads in the front of the spool and that's why you're getting those wind knots it doesn't give you that even oscillation on there laying out nice and even even for the payoff and is that jack works very closely with shimano is that a shimano thing or i mean is it in terms of like it it's in better wheels you're going to get better line light is that uh they related it's uh it's going to be on the lookout for up the chain into the higher quality reels you're looking at reels likes um twin power or stella just like alex said i fish stellas for albies i love them i think albies are a fish that if you're going to target them you ought to treat yourself i mean i know why you're fishing for al paul salvador so treat yourself get the right get the right tackle don't miss a fish because you're dealing with wind knots or something else yeah yeah

what's that alex especially if you're shore fishing you know because it's the sort of sort of you know it's the sort of outing where where one fish makes a break today and um you can't you know you can't be going out there with with you know sort of uh you know less than the best stuff i i think i think because it can make the difference between a successful and an unsuccessful day excellent excellent um so you know there are a number of uh important bait fish and we can let you guys sort of riff on it but um you know it can convey ridiculously small um and i pulled a bunch of slides out of this part of the deck because i just didn't want the slide deck to be too long but the idea of uh you know matching profile matching movement matching speed there's a whole bunch of things uh that are part of that and then there's uh i think um i'm kind of believing more and more that a lot of times people look at a surface feed or look at alby's schooling up bait and they see the bait and they see the albie and that's the equation but often there's other predators feeding on that same bait ball and there's an opportunity to make something happen so when you see something ridiculously small like this you're like well [ __ ] you match that with a jig or a or a fly and uh you're the billionth piece of bait you could look at that and throw something um that's brighter you know like a tutti frutti style you know electric chicken or something like that jig or fly um or you could uh look at what the alternatives what other predators might be there do you guys have any thoughts on how you how to approach the small bait problem well jack can probably speak this something i'm kind of interested in but i'm just to kind of go off you know um to the fullest extreme i think that there's definitely a scenario when you've got tiny little balled up anchovies like you're looking at there yeah even smaller than that where the the albies are ripping through with their mouths wide open and not targeting an individual fish and i don't know if that happens for bluefin on sand deals or whatnot when you've got real thick balls of bait but they i i'm i'm convinced that there are times when you find them difficult to hook because they're not they're not they're not eating individual bait fish you're not then they're not eating one right yeah go ahead jackson the world is hands down the baby butter fish that is the mini bay anchovy to the false albacore that's the bluefin it they can get very difficult to catch when they're feeding on those little tiny butter fish and they're usually more focused on these small rafts of sargasso weed that the butter fish will aggregate to and it's they're very high on the surface they usually can't mark them there's not big prolific feeds it's very casual um there's a lot of similarities between bluefin you know with butters small baby butters and false albacore with the anchovy but i will say this i mean both these guys mentioned this so much of it has to do with if you have a lure that does produce these fish confidence in what you're throwing and how you throw it when you throw it you're making your cast count and i really think tide is probably one of the most to me biggest factors i've had mornings where i'm doing everything right i know i've caught enough over enough period of time that if i'm getting frustrated i'm not hooking them and i downsize my profile a little bit i'm still not hooking them i said there's just going to be some part of this tide where they're going to chow and i wish i could say it's always the last hour of the incoming or the first hour the outgoing but it never seems to be consistently the same it just seems like there's one part of the tide that they want to eat they do for me they tend to eat a little better first light too they're in blue fin and the elephant are the same thing seems like low light they chow and then it's kind of like you pick away at them and then there's just one part of the tide where they just they chow like every day there's like one part of the tide it runs a certain way they want it that day and they just feed hard yeah it doesn't seem like profile is that big a deal as it was earlier in the day yeah an early season observation from rhodey is the dropping tide is seems to be more um productive now whereas maybe later cooler water whatever it's um it'll change yeah that's what i'm seeing and so i'm going out tomorrow morning on an incoming tide i'm excited to go but i would rat i wish the tire was going the other way you know i wish i could go out in the afternoon but um a question that came in that i don't know that we answered or i didn't uh ask was um as it relates to deadly dicks and some of those lures that come with hardware on them do you guys if you fish any of those do you take it off i mean or i mean i think of the deadly dick is a as a as a lure that does a lot of spinning and it's going to complicate your line your your um your braid in time right so you almost have to leave what do you guys think what's that i think the deadly deck comes with a swivel yeah it does it does so it's a question do you take it off or do you leave it on for the fact that that lure more than many of the others we've talked about like the whole sniper and the snack they don't spin so much leave it on yeah okay so over the years like i used to do um ice official at a lighter braid you know 20 pound braid

what you find when you go to lighter braid and p you know obviously you know to alex's uh argument lighter braid you're going to cast further i mean it's a smaller diameter you know the whole enchilada i use 40 pound braid

um why is i i find that slightly thicker braid prevents some wind nuts prevents those those loops to get on the braid especially if you got to throw into the wind not you don't get it as often as you do when you're down like 15 20 pound braid when you jump to 40 doesn't happen as often um and then you know i was going to mention this too is some guys i know like to use swivels you know somewhere you know from the breed uh to a swivel then to the leader in the heat of the moment he ripped that swivel right through the tip top and now one rod down you know especially new anglers it's exciting you know they're reeling it in reeling you know they have a fish on they get it close to the boat and they they're cranking and also like pink it blows the you know blows the ceramic out of the guide and then you're kind of hosed you know you're you know you can't really use that rod for the day and if you try to it's just gonna saw right through your braid anyway so that rods down so i just go straight um you know i mean the x xo jigs from game on um hoagies and alex's i'll be snacks uh it depends on the day but i you know most of the time loop knots especially on the albu snack i use a loop knot um when it comes to hoagies or the uh exo jigs uh you know cinch not works but you do have to be mindful of the braid uh it will twist over the course of the day um you'll find that no matter what you do you're gonna get a bird's nest on one rod it's gonna happen interesting too on the um as far as modifying hardware if you want to consider hooks as part of the hardware yeah yeah you could go to a single j-hook instead of one of them small bendable trebles on there the biggest thing you got to do is just make sure you're not modifying the action of the bait i mean those things come packaged to swim the way they're supposed to so if you do it doesn't hurt to weigh them it might seem a little crazy but if you're really looking for that action that you want it doesn't hurt to weigh your hooks make sure you're trying you know you're not changing the drag coefficient through the water on it and changing the action of the lure maybe you change it for the better but in most cases those lures are packaged to swim a very specific way um there are fresh water jigs that are metal that are made for ice fishing stuff like swedish pimple things like that that long time ago we used to switch the hooks out if they were fresh water but now most of these products that are coming out like you know whether you're picking metal current sniper deadly dick or even a jerk bait something you want they're coming with decent hooks on them and they're made specifically so that the action is correct on them so you got to be careful with what kind of modification you do that you're not inhibiting the action everywhere if you change your hook hardware and jack do you ever use like the quick the quick connect the quick snaps i haven't even want albies i use them on bass all the time yeah cause i know like even for bass depending on the lure you're throwing and the size of that clip uh you know you're gonna it'll nose it down and if it affects the way it swims and then you gotta kind of adjust that try to go to the smallest one you can so it doesn't affect it um you know obviously alby's it's not going to matter all that much because usually you're just cranking it through the water and it's you know spinning around but i think that extra hardware on there even though i say that they don't have great eyesight and they're not leaders shy i think that affects the lure so i just want these yeah if you weigh down the front of that date it's i mean i come from that bluefin world where our standard connection for a lot of baits especially if we might have to change out is a small heavy-duty uh barrel swivel with a split ring through there and i've taken that to a world like throwing big spooks or you know like a splash walk or a dock or something like that and i actually like to put a solid ring like you would buy for a jig you know something you can put your assist hooks on and i tie that directly to the palomar and then i put a split ring on that and it's a lot less hardware it's lighter weight than one of those longer clips uh that's another option for a quick change out but if you're confident in the bait and you fish it with confidence you shouldn't have to be changing out that much anyway i'd say that you know what jack just mentioned that that type of rigging you know it's you brought it it's kind of an offshore uh way to rig that you've brought to even you know light tackle stuff you know in short and uh he did a video a couple of weeks ago for for saltwater edges on our youtube but it sort of explains the the setup and it it's it you know you when it's just simple and uh and um you know the solid split ring it's all they've always been on the wall and they've i've just thought of them as a as an offshore thing and now i'm starting to use them um in short for exactly as you described it's like a metallic uh non-slip loop that you can change out quickly without having to cut your floor it's a nice option and it doesn't add that weight that mike's talking about that's going to inhibit the action of your baby yep yep good one um so uh i just saved this because uh this is a forever old picture that tom um richardson took the former editor of saltwater sportsman please let me use it over the years you can see the bluefish tail at the top but you can also see the um bluefish splashes are more um up and down in and and and whereas the albies on the lower more um you know uh more um have more momentum in them what's the yeah go ahead jack help me

i mean it the the word i use is it's a it's a slash not a splash you know that's i mean that's if you're for to a layman i mean if you want to get into you know distinguishing say a bonito from an albany then you have to get a little bit more you know specific or whatever but as far as you know you know you should be able to you know we've seen them enough times distinguish a blue fish from a striper from a a tunoid you know in that early season when everyone's just looking looking looking they chase a lot of bluefish um hoping that they're albies they chase a lot of little bluefish yeah know those little rat blues that are like three four pounds you know those little tailors and harbor balls they they give off almost the exact vibe because they kind of feed the same way the bigger blues much more it's much more of a boil with the slap you know you kind of hear it's a little louder like like peter said the splash comes up a little more um you can start to tell the difference and and now it's like you said it slices you know i always say it's like an olympic diver when they go in the water they make almost no splash at all um and i tell people too don't use your eyes use your ears they make a very distinct sound when they come up behind you and they slice through the water you know it sounds like that ripping fly line through the water that like whooshing rip and a lot of times you turn your head and you don't see anything especially with a little choppy out but you know if you're not seeing anything use your ears especially in the f you know if you're on a foggy morning you'll start hearing that slicing you know the birds in the distance uh and you'll hear that's what alex is saying the slice versus the splash so you know which way to go and remember they're gonna they're gonna feed differently depending on the bait they're on which is why i really do love fishing from shore because we're just on the beach it's coming so hit it alex we just had the bait we just had the bait uh you know slide the last slide and i i personally love when they're on the silver sides you know um i think when they're on spearing uh that's typically um you can get them offshore or or on their own but they are an inshore bait fish that will be tight to structure and typically larger and not so tightly packed and i think that when they feed on those it's it's it's my favorite type of fishing for albies um because the way they're coming up on them and if they're on tiny little snot bait you know that stuff and we get you know like mike knows in the western sound you get some you get some some anchovies that are like uh that are like even compared to the one that you had in your hand there yeah like as long as an eyelash and clear black eyes and if the bait's not if the bait's not moving fast the albie doesn't need to move fast to catch it and so you you can't have a varied alby thing where and i think you know jack would know but tuna will do this as well depending i mean you got to remember that albies are going to eat a a wide wide variety of bait bait fish i i used to there was a stretch there maybe 10 years ago when i was i was keeping them and smoking them from my aunt you know the albies and i probably kept i don't know a dozen of them and looked at their stomachs every time and and catching fish that had uh a plethora of different fish in inside their stomach of different species you know you know uh squid a lot of snapper blues like six inches you know big baits yeah that's big a lot of different stuff in there so you gotta remember they're they're gonna they're splashing a look different depending what they're on i agree the way when they're feeding on silver sides they're that wolf pack they're smaller groups they're they're punching that bait they're hurting you know versus just feeding in a big ball which is more tune-esque offshore that kind of feeding the other thing that alex mentioned that i liked was uh he mentioned a quick difference between the splashing between false albacore and bonino and maybe these guys agree with me or not but usually if i see and i know it's a hard tail if it's uniform and it's feeding it's albies if it's a little bit more erratic chaotic it's bonita the same with you yeah yeah albies are like synchronized it's really cool yeah yeah like coyotes you know like a wolf pack the um you know the other observation i had and i wanted to ask you guys i may have pulled the slide um but you know i think of bay anchovies and peanuts as feeding you know or as traveling in tight packs you know and then they work on them as well to make them tighter and then something like silver sides and sand deals more spread out to start with right um how does that and alec i think you're probably you know you're talking a bit about it how's that change the the feeding pattern or the lure fly selection or tactics you know do you make an observation you say their stomach's got all kinds of things in it and that makes sense too because i i feel really good and confident i honestly think the albie snack looks a lot like a squid and um and that's uh and it's when they're on small baits there's often other predators like squid or snapper blues around right and so if there's more calories right over here versus a ton of small ones over here i can it makes sense to me that they might um do that and then i think of the albie snack itself it's looking a lot like or a little ron z or or or um you know lures like that um have a squid-like uh look to them and so i'm just curious when you see the different um types of bait called bay anchovies and peanuts which i think of schooling tightly silverside sand deals maybe is more diffuse does that um does that change your approach and you guys have some thoughts on on on how you uh might attack those different scenarios yeah i mean i i i absolutely think that it does my thing is i like to think about and again this is kind of going going to the soft plastic specifically unweighted soft plastics versus versus metals or i mean kenny because i come from a uh i still i mean i fish from you know um when you know when the deadly dick the cast master the original epoxy jig you know which is of course um yeah i like the acme needle eel they had a lot of good stuff back in the day um but again i i think that what what i like about the not to make this a an obvious next thing but a weightless soft plastic allows you to fish at different speeds whereas i mean you can you can you can flutter a spoon through there if you want but it's going to be dropping so to keep so a lot of things we'll think about and again talking about how how tightly the bait is is schooled up uh will oftentimes be directly related to how many fish are on it and if you have these smaller feeds of these say you know four to six albies that are cruising a shoreline together that are ripping up in the same into silver sides that are not too closely packed together right a it's going to be brief they're not going to hit it more than once um they're not going to come back and circle to which they which they can do on offshore baits um but you can do something where you can where you can leave it in that zone you know that that that known strike zone amongst the bait and still get a hit like my my absolute favorite thing to do is to is to cast the the plastic out there and to not move it did it did i dressed it yeah it did stick it exactly because that because a lot of the bait isn't isn't overly fast you know right you gotta remember that a lot of these bait fish aren't aren't super fast they're not on ballyhoo all the time and not even super big right yeah and if you in and if you can if you can twitch something there or leave something there in the strike zone especially if it's a a tight strike zone uh you're you're you're you're time that you're ripping a it's you're ripping a metal through there it's only in this small window for a split second whereas if there's fish underneath they're gonna hit something that's that's sitting there uh oftentimes uh at a greater rate that's true with every species of hardtail even tunes like even giants and if you can keep a bait with action in the strike zone it's way better than ripping metal by it or throwing the top water hoping you're in front of that one fish right when they come up and that's why and that's why the fly is is some for you know and why you know mike would notice with having a good fly experience for the albies to be able to look at it from both perspectives you know fly is like you you're never going to move a fly nearly as fast as you can rip in a jig and especially these high you know it and you see it from different perspective and a lot of times like you were talking about mike would cast in the sinking line and just just slowly rip it through there something you can you know you you don't need to and that's really why i fell in love with alby fishing to begin with is there were a lot of these what i thought of in fishing in general there's a lot of myths in a lot of stuff that because you have to draw conclusions on on insufficient amounts of evidence in all of fishing so you have to really pick and choose you know what are you attributing any sort of behavior too and and you've got to be smart about it and alby fishing is great because you get such a small snippet and you have to make such a big assumption about what the truth is um yeah that's why it's magical i think it's just so cool that you you sort of have this little glimpse into this albee world and you're trying to sort of put pieces together but it's easy to to to to come to the you know a false truth which i think i think it's kind of loaded with honestly this this type of fishing and it's sort of like taking it apart it's like a big puzzle well it's funny you know you talk about keeping something in the strike zone and you know obviously the aubie snack is kind of the you know the gold standard for for soft plastics and hobbies um but you know when you talk about lure selection fly selection whatever you know you always hear the story of like an eight-year-old reeling up a clam strip off the bottom for porgy fishing and they went up with albies or bonito um so it goes back to the point of you know they aren't really that picky but they're they're only picky based on the situation they're in and the food that they're around so when they get on peanut bunker i've always found it's harder to catch them they get they seem to get more picky uh i don't know why but another thing in in jack and alex and even peter have you ever noticed that the albie bite starts to heat up on a wind against tide scenario have you ever that same thing as rip currents any of that super contrasty current i i love that yeah so on a wind against tide scenario looking at you know bait fish habits uh bay anchovies are terrible swimmers though we're silver sides so when you get a you know peanut bunker a little different but they're not all that great either but when you get a win against tide scenario they can't swim like they're in the tide and the wind and they're just kind of holding in one spot and that she starts to see those bigger feeds those bigger foams because the bait can't move it can't get away they're stuck is that when they're happiest i think i mean i had to drop

the mouth of uh right off castle hill wind against tide big you know hard disk you know like um be comfortable in a in a in a small center console you know big water but they just didn't stop yeah that might be when they're happiest weird i was talking earlier with you guys about bates trying to hear that yeah man you find bay anchovies or sand eels or whatever it might be that's when they're they're happiest that's when and it's not i'm hearing i'm hearing more like in that scenario that choppy wind against tide uh their physical advantage their strength their speed might be at its uh at its peak you know their their physical advantage

rip currents are letting all that water out like every breach way or any kind of like that's creating that same scenario that's exactly what they're talking about that bait fish gets tumbled around and they're strong enough to swim against it but they they can't they can't go through it and they don't want to turn around and you know uh have to have the current at their back so they just kind of keep facing into it hoping they're going to make some ground and the albies just can gingerly just keep staying on that bait ball until it's gone the um question for you alex from shore do you like the wind hard in your face or would you rather have it at your back

yeah a lot of i mean honestly for it it's definitely trade-off especially if you're trying to fish weightless soft plastic from shore because you know you're going to cast it twice as far if you're i got the wind on your back so um but as far as seeing fish and uh and i do like it you know i do like the ability to rig the the weightless soft plastics uh weedlessly because you know if if there is wind wind on shore you're probably going to have some weed in there uh which is a good thing to need i think especially the toilet base that you're trying to like butter fish like jack was talking about i remember you know trying to i know he's mostly talking about the bluefin on the bait on the assume different sizes and whatnot but

late august when they were around like fishers island uh ten years ago and uh the little ones like nickels and dimes and and those things are holding underneath these jellyfish and they're in there and they're on stuff and also broke up a little bit alex was that butter fish you were talking about sorry yeah butter fish butter fish that are holding on uh on some sort of debris you know yeah yeah but anyway uh i would i would say a lot of a lot of people talk about you know the wind blowing the bait and i think especially for fishing from shore i think there's a lot of wind stacking up nutrients that the baits then feeding on because these baits aren't aren't typically great swimmers i totally agree with mike um and actually i kind of want to touch on what he said was uh with wind against tide thing um and he mentioned earlier about driving the boat through birds to force the birds up so that they have to relocate uh prematurely onto whatever bait ball they think can be a good in good uh disrupter of poorly swimming bait fish to then get feet and people say oh yeah albies are scared of motors you know you've got to shut your thing off but i've seen them in prop washes you know so you've got to be they're going to be opportunistic and if your prop is messing up a bait ball look look in your wake because you know i'm looking at your wake

so jack and alex i don't know i mean i've mentioned this before you talk about boat week right um obviously this is crap you don't do when there's other people around you but there's times i've been out you know deeper water not nobody really around you you come up on you know school blowing up um and and you know they're the typical albi they're being a pain in the ass they're up and down up and down one of the things that you can do at least it's worked for me any time you go to move like alex says look at your prop wash they're almost you almost always see them hopping behind you as you motor so what i'll do is i try to trick them i fool them with trickery i do a big circle and come back and then park myself in the middle of the circle it gives you a 360 degree view of what could happen around you and at one at somewhere around your butt they're they're popping through that prep prop wash so if you do a big enough circle then park in the middle of it they're actually around you so now you now opportunity but don't do it when there's you know you know obviously by yourself and you know the other thing you can do and i don't want to tell everyone the secrets but 50 people here go ahead you know always i only like to carry a bag of popcorn for the amount for the for the watchers birds get on the popcorn and then you go find the fish easier not to not to give away a big secret or whatever as well but i you know just if we got the green light uh you know with the 50 people i mean you know come see captain mike because what he's talking about the the long island sound like there's some albe stuff going on out there that is a there's good opportunities out there and you know i know i've met alex in the past and we've talked over the you know a few times over the years um we don't get montauk we you know it's not talk it's not the vineyard it's not nantucket um but we have a pretty good not every year unfortunately but uh you know i think i was looking back 2017 was like one of those we had 64 in one day you know on a four trip with like four guys with spin gear you know it was insane uh does it happen every day and you know how that is no you go to the same rip you know you don't i don't you don't initially immediately think of uh the western sound as an albie hotspot um i want to include you because uh you know associating associated with the guide association and things but i'm learning more uh about it then i kind of appreciate it you know i mean you're right you rattle off the places that everyone knows there's a lot there's a lot of great spots in in our waters um you know for bass blue fish and false hobbies you know benito we don't get as much as we used to um we haven't had a great year in a long time you know i think it goes back to 2008 was that nine was probably one of the better years and then you know you get a trickle here and there you know there's a few we just don't really get them but the albies seem to come down very consistent and even last year i mean it sucked i mean i'm all right i mean it was like three days it was decent and one of those three days i mean there was no boats and there was fish everywhere yeah uh but like a light switch they're gone with it you know the day later they're nowhere to be found they were you know the guys found him there like 35 miles to the east of me um you know is it worth the run that's pretty long ride to go catch a couple albies and come back you have to come back yeah yeah and you know you get get you get a [ __ ] wind kicks up and you know next thing you know you got it in the face and you got three footers and white caps and no one's really too happy especially if the abbies were picky that day and then you got to take the pounding all the way back um but you know we do have a good you know we have a great fishery and i'm sure alex has fished down you know through fairfield over the years um from campo you know pensfield the sunken island area you know all hotspots you know they show up there every year they're always skipping around that neck of the woods um sometimes in big numbers sometimes they're just kind of spotty you know here and there type albies but uh the key is you know if you're not there you're not catching albies yeah

you're not out there in the crap weather and you're in the rain or you know even some days sometimes it's freezing rain you know in late october you know cold it's miserable but you're pretty warm and you gotta you got you're coming tight to albies you forget how cold that is yeah yeah um i i hope this thing plays this is a video from a couple years ago but it certainly demonstrates the wolf pack idea

lazy bass shows up that's lazy bass right in the middle

it gives you that look of peeling an onion and then slashing through it

i'll get you when this is over because i it's got sound it's a little loud see if i can it's almost over anyway you get the point well all right both mike and jack had comments what was it it said as random as that kind of looks it's it's it's fairly organized in their attack you know i mean like you can kind of see they keeps they keep going like counterclockwise around it and ripping them up on the back side and then coming through it so it just seems like they're all moving it's it's definitely coordinated effort but i love the mention of it there that's definitely going on deeper underneath there too yeah i was gonna say from your hardtail tuna other perspectives what what's the what's what else do you see that just looked exactly like every tuna feed i've ever seen on a bait ball that's only the tuna usually work in unison with mammals the albies were doing that all on their own you know usually like with the yellow thing we had it's the dolphin one and on the cape you got you know humpbacks making a bubble fence and then they push the bait to the surface and then those tuna are going through there doing that you know that's that's pretty textbook like pelagic feeding on a bait ball right there there you go yeah very cool very cool

um now jack and alex i don't know this was brought up to me by uh john field peter you know john yep uh he had mentioned it kind of made sense you notice that you can be out in a spot and you know that you see a pretty good feed you know multiple feeds going on you kind of get there things kind of dwindle and then it becomes like really spotty and erratic like 10 fish pop over here three fish pop over there there's still a lot of fish around but they're just very randomly you know little pops here little pops there then all of a sudden for like 20 seconds it's all hell breaks loose and then it stops again and then they go to being random and john brought up an idea that they feed on tide pulses so if the current is moving at two and a half knots in one area and all of a sudden it bumps to three you know and also nick that that gets them to really fired up to feed because the bait gets even more disorientated through the current and then as that tide kind of simmers down again they go back to their my little picky uni pops over here and over there and i kind of paid attention to it the last couple years and it is kind of weird like it's almost like you can almost time it you know like every you know 10 15 minutes or so boom they kind of blow up and then it dies off i have an observation like that but i and i've got a slide coming up watch hill reef and you know i think when they find structure they run the bait they chew they take advantage of corralling the bait and using the structure to attack it right but then as that dissipates or the or this the bait ball gets beat up then they're kind of random ones you know and they're feeding kind of sporadically and eventually they got to get the band back together go find another bait ball to do it again and that's why they come back 20 minutes later they found another bait ball and they ran it through the same opportunity you know like the watch hill reef which is i'll show you that in a minute why don't we do this um we're we've uh we've been at it about now we're gonna we're gonna give it another 10 minutes or so let's talk about dealing with baseball specifically then go to that sporadic spread out you know um so any thoughts on on on on bait balls these are a couple things i threw up there it's a good time to stand out when the bait's really tight and packed uh think about the other predator that's come up a couple of times alex said that um you know when he's when he cleaned the fish for his aunt snapper blue fish and squid bigger predators were there any other um any other tips

i don't disagree with you um there's a term that they call peacocking and you're you're right i think you need to be stand out from the crowd a little bit in some instances um one of the things a lot of guys forget uh with the fly game and spin game and my friend david reena you may know david peter from uh he's up on the key artist yeah yes the artist peter hey david um he fishes a lot of topwater plugs like small little top water plugs that he used to make um and gurglers people kind of forget about the gurgler it's a it it's an injured bait fish that pushes awake on the surface and i found that when they're not all that crazy foaming and they're just kind of a lot of them in an area and they seem to be random picking off little bits here little bits there stripping a gurgler through just kind of through random water you get a lot of fish come up and just absolutely truck it they come clear out of the water with it and you know it's kind of funny when it looks like you're flying a kite and you got the you know albie comes clear out of the water on a on a rocket but then try to get them tight again you're right mike i mean that's that's a good that that's a great presentation any sort of surface surface plug especially when the fish aren't showing and we haven't talked much about blind casting i don't know and i know david he's an amazing fisherman uh big fly guy and used to fish the spots you know the western sound short spots which uh and um fish a lot with him but the uh my my retrieves are are night and day different typically on blind casting versus casting and actively breaking fish and i think that should probably be i don't know if we're going to talk about blind casting at all but i think that's taken yeah it's it's i've especially a short guy you know you can't always put yourself in front of showing fish um in a day i would so much rather see singles and doubles of cruising fish in front of me then i would see the biggest albie [ __ ] show you've ever seen even in casting range if it's coming by once every hour because you can only catch one fish at a time yeah it's no matter how many you're seeing so if you can get that surface commotion to draw that fish in that isn't activating and it's like a lot of stuff if the fish are not keyed in on a bait ball and they're cruising and you can get that in front of them when they have nothing else they're looking at it's a home run that's when you want it that's when you want to draw that fish and not when it's in in the it's not the fish disappears like those mike lapitude ones those fish we're in they're in their you know wolf pack whatever yeah they're down but they're also in the feeding they see something there those fish are only down eight feet you know they see something above their head and they're gonna they're gonna smoke it especially especially you say like if it's off the bait ball where the bait balls been kind of depleted and you know there's a couple random weird pops here and there not much going on that's the time like you know your alby snack uh how that skips across the surface and how that tail creates that just a little bit of flick on the surface that imitates how the silver sides react when they're they're fleeing uh same thing with the gurglers that little v wake that little bit of splash of water that that they know to turn around and hit you know because especially if it's the only thing that's kind of a little bit bigger in the area um the bait balls kind of not much around there's kind of just random small little pods of bait swimming around they see something that is a little bigger you know maybe they think a juvenile um you know uh snapper blue or whatever it is and they're like oh that's that we we recognize that we're gonna eat it um and they'll come out of their way to grab they'll come you know come 20 feet down if there's no food around them and they see you know one of them sees something above their head he's coming up to get

all my roofs were fishing from shore initially for false albacore that's what made me want to catch tuna in the first place and just like alex said i i would have hated to see a certain feed i used to like watching them flash by in one area and i would my spot was the west wall i used to just i'd go out to that couple sets of bends out there and whatever bend i could see one or two breezers occasionally i would just pound that constantly with the presentation non-stop blind casting and i caught way more fish doing that than the guys that would sit there at their rods on their shoulder and try to react it faster and now you take it to the same world mike and i are operating in um yeah i you know there is patterns to their feeding if they're in an area they gen if they do stay in an area they are kind of cyclic there is kind of a pattern to it and i've always done better with them making small corrections to position myself to a bait ball or defeating fish than the roaring charging you know if you if you roar up on them you disrupt the entire process whereas if you you do notice all right they came up there four times in that one spot maybe it was near where your boat wake happened to be but maybe it was maybe you can reference it usually we're fishing somewhere near land here at one point or another uh you know it always seems like it's off that one corner whenever we end up back on them or it's over there in front of this spot so you find that if you keep yourself in that area and you make a smaller correction you get a casting shot at them versus roaring up on them you got a much better opportunity but from shore i was a blind caster all day and same exact thing mike said i i couldn't agree more i mean alex said i couldn't agree more with the the blind casting to where you see him breezing once or twice there's a far better way to hook up than if you try to just cast and reactively uh make a shot at feeding fish uh i'm i'm i'm bumming out i i either pulled the watch he'll slide or slip by it but my and i could i know uh i'm sure almost all you guys know it uh watch hill so a nice um reef system a lot of uh current uh flowing through there and then um as the reef ends uh at the at the lighthouse there's a uh a a bay uh there and um but the current slows down and kind of dissipates and the bait is often and the albies have often worked you can see them work their way down this reef and then the baits kind of spread out over a larger area and uh you know and i've had that's where you know when i used to be able to fish there i um used to have good access to it um but i don't not so much anymore but the idea is that there's this area that after that uh synchronous synchronized swim of a feed has happened that there's random bait swimming around and and i can see that would be the time for a top water like the gurgler or the uh snack or a jumping minnow i could see also for me it was my place to blind cast because i knew they were there they had to either pick off random ones in which case i was more likely to use a jig that would match the hatch if you will as they randomly pick stuff off but then they're gonna have to regroup and do it again and um you know i think uh one of the questions we got does it make more sense i think i know what you guys are gonna say to to chase some feeds or to drift an anchor and how do you for the boat guys um choose what to do when i know you're not running gun like up and to and through the school i know that but i mean if you if you relocate a lot um you know what's the situation where you're doing that versus a situation where you might um anchor up well i mean i have i i haven't used my anchor in 15 years hanker um just said spot lock but you know yeah no i don't even have a trolling mod uh so what jack said is um going about uh uh let me see if i can remember what he just was talking about with uh you know not running through him et cetera set her blown like right up on him we see you guys do it all the time how i determine how listen if i'm by myself and you know i can run and get ahead of them yeah i'm gonna run and get ahead of them you know as long as i'm not cutting anybody off i you know to me that's not run and gun and i try to get ahead of him i don't try to get right to the school right what i'm doing is you know in jack and even ads you know if you fish for whether you're stripers blue fish whatever you're gonna fish for a false albacore you you know what you're you know what you're looking for you've done this enough so you're looking to see well that school showed up right you know at two o'clock about 50 yards off me now five minutes later it shows up again then five minutes later it shows up again all in that same zone so you start to figure out that all right in about five to ten minutes they're going back there again you know because i've seen them do this and they go back to the scene of the crime all the time jack said there's cyclical they kind of come back to that same scene over and over and over again until everything's depleted then they go find someplace else so i'll get in an area where they're active and then just get up ahead of them kill the engine or not kill the engine you know kill the engine you know kind of if there's people around you and you're trying to be nice to them if you're by yourself you keep the engine on and drift to them kind of get in a line where you've been seeing them consistent get ahead of them by like 20 30 yards so you don't disrupt where they're you know where they're feeding and then drift through them and and then once you get past them 30 yards start fire up the edge and come back and do it again it's it's almost counterproductive to run right up to a school and throw into it because you hook one fish and that school's down and it's not going to come back up for a while if you buy when you're fighting your fish that school is you know 60 yards the other direction jumping around you're going to go chase it where does it show up again right where you just were yeah it's every single time they'll keep your engine off um you know most of the time i think drifting is the best solution and if you're in areas that these fish are active they're you know you're seeing schools pop up um you know and they're pretty close they're just not close enough just drift eventually one of those schools is going to pop up three feet off the side of your boat you can have an easy catch

the um so you know i we've covered a lot of ground we've been doing it for an hour and 20 minutes you guys done a great job i guess i would ask one more question of each of you and i uh give jack the inshore answer mike the fly answer and and alex uh the short answer what would be your best you know alby tip or resource albies are just ahead you know uh the season is is we're in the very early days so um you know what do you have uh uh for uh for a tip or a resource or or something to keep in mind um you know i guess i'll start with you jack up from the inshore perspective um what would you think uh the folks on this uh on this uh live should be should be keeping in front of their minds i would i would just say keep the process effective don't be reactive be proactive about it you know fine look get take a second when you see them figure out what they're doing position your boat so that you can make a smaller correction or just like mike said maybe drift on them don't be so reactive and charge into them especially if you're around other boats you know have confidence in the lures that you know that are gonna work and uh just pay attention to what's going on and make small corrections i think that slower hurry up and slow down approach is much better than just you know right of the valkyries into every school that's out there you're gonna catch more fish being cerebral about the process than you are reactive to it yeah great great mike um you know for the fly game uh i say this keep it simple don't overthink everything um there's no magic fly there's no magic lure they don't exist because peter would be you know peter would not be doing this he'd be in his his uh sky top mansion somewhere

you know none of that exists but to what jack saying i'm sure i also say this too have a confidence in what you're fishing you know um be aware of the bait that that lives in your neck of the woods you know if they're on half beaks well that's great but we don't have half beaks here uh that's that's out by jack that's offshore a little more we don't have that kind of bait you know we have you know three or four different uh bait fish to choose from uh keep your fly box stocked with it keep it sick keep all your tackles simple don't overdo it keep it like check let's stick to the program work on your casting go to the park now yeah call a casting instructor i'd agree with you the the casting albies for the fly guy probably require the uh utmost casting skill it's the toughest because there's 30 feet over there there's 20 feet over there and it happens fast so that practice i i goddamn i agree completely that's probably the best tip there is yeah and and you know choose your fly lines wisely not every fly line's the same uh not every fly line casts decently on every rod um you know right now i'm using uh you know for the albies and even for stripers and blues i'm using a royal wolf uh ambush line uh it's a really short head with a really long running line it's like casting a you know a softball on a string it fires out there with two back casts you can you can bomb 70 80 feet same thing i um i'm also using the sciangler sonar titan full intermediate and also the new striper blitz line by cortland isn't so isn't too shabby either i mean it's a little heavy heavily weighted throw the rio lines those out uh those outbound shorts back in the game quick minimize the faults yeah okay you know a lot of these guys come from the trout world and they used to drive you know they used to false casting to get their you know size 18 royal wolf dried off um we're not we don't have to be that fancy we don't have to be that delicate uh it's get it back in the water as fast as you can because the longer it's in the water the more chance a fish has to hit it got it got it alex all right uh well just and i don't i know i'm not i'm supposed to talk about shore fishing specifically but what mike mentioned about the fly fishing and one thing i want to bring up for albies is i i do a fair amount of fly fishing myself i i really like the idea of i feel like saltwater fly fishing is thought of as an unnecessary hindrance like hunting with a bow versus a rifle but there it was it was fly fishing was was invented out of necessity right it had an actual purpose and there are certain applications in saltwater fly fishing when a fly can be advantageous and actually the best way of doing it namely when you're trying to cast something really small on a rod that is meant to fight something that pulls and albeit if you're catching it on a one-inch fly and the thing's gonna tug you in some current you know there's a trade off there you can't cast anything that's that small on a rod that is light enough to load if you're talking about spinning gear so it's it's a time when fly fishing actually can be practical better tool for the job like trying to catch a an al uh striper on a cinder worm or a 200 pound tarpon on a mini little thing or on the flats whatever it may be right there are certain times when actually that is so so i i think that ali fishing with the fly shouldn't necessarily be thought of as more difficult than it needs to be at times it can be the best way to target these fish but as far as guys fishing from shore i would say get yourself a pair of binoculars so you can scan some water i would say try to build a network of guys because people from shore you know you can and i would say just try to get your i know it's nice to know small bits of water intimately like the way people used to fish i know mark said he talks about the fact that guys used to have like the tiny tiny little area they used to fish and they wouldn't leave it in that but they knew that thing like they knew when to fish in i think with albies you have to be willing to move around because those fish are going to be moving so try to get yourself a swath in in a network of guys so you can be texting and talking to from shore that will uh you guys you can share and tell with i think that's that's a lot of fun to make a lot of friends that way and you can really uh bounce her and bounce around you can leave fish to find fish it's uh interesting what you said about the fly rod and when you know uh crazy alberto's the guy who developed the tactical anglers clip right steve mckenna jack's gonna know him uh developed the way to rig a slugo as an eel and tony stetsko the off the uh surf caster in the outer cape um you know caught a 70 63 pound striped bass on on the uh on the teaser you know and all three of them at one time or another told me when the bait's small when they're feeding in flow when they're going to get a long look at it give me a fly rod these are top-notch surf guys here's when because there's there's tools for the job i also me personally the fly or die isn't gonna get you there you're gonna miss opportunities if you take that approach too so uh it's uh i i i agree with you uh alex that there's a time oh well the first i guess uh the thing i want to do now is is thank each of you guys man your expertise uh you all just met i know i guess now i realize alex and mike know each other but the um you know you're just you're generous and you're sharing and you're in and it's really great i i uh we've held this audience almost the entire time you know that's an hour and 27 minutes so um you guys must be really good i want to thank will poston for um uh who's uh works with me at the american saltwater guide association to kind of be a moderator and feed me some of these questions um i'd remind you the uh saltwater age albe shootout started today and runs through october 10th you can sign up at the saltwater edge website all the proceeds go to the guide association they go to the guide association it costs 25 bucks to enter and alby tag costs 250 dollars so the goal here is to raise money to buy more tags and uh um you know the more we can know about false albacore the better able we will be to um to to get this game fish this fish managed in a way that that serves all the uh stakeholders you know whether it's commercial guys or recreational guys but without the data uh it's kind of tough let me just see if i can um you know what's crazy peter i i was doing some reading last year yeah and there's there's places in the world right um not around these parts you know out in the indian ocean you know far off lands because those fish they're prevalent in a lot of waters in the mediterranean all over the place i never knew that there's areas of the world that they they only feed at night i didn't know that they only feed at nighttime yeah yeah has anyone here ever heard of somebody catching albies at night no i don't know what is going on bluefin feet at night jack just thinking there's so many there's so many coral areas do you have much of that yeah definitely but more so further offshore from what my experience is yeah i know people that have caught them at night fishing those guys that overnight on the cape commercially and go fishing in the morning but i've caught them in the canyons late in the year like october november just like every drop i mean they when they migrate out there it's it's insane but we're talking like late october early november you can just get massive feeds of them but they'll eat at night yeah well guys we don't we don't attribute to that but i mean maybe maybe we should have head lamps on and going out at night

at least you get your spot to yourself that's right well guys thanks again thanks so much um a lot of great feedback here people have really enjoyed themselves they've certainly learned a lot i have and i i thank you guys uh for your time and uh your generosity guys all have a good night peter thank you everybody alex give me a shout out take care mike bye bye thanks guys

alex you still there

cheers

you