On Friday the 9th, I had the pleasure of taking out Steve and his two work buddies Brenden and Joel – both of whom had never really fished saltwater before.
Within minutes of leaving the inlet we were into albies – albies that were biting readily. Steve, a great fisherman, caught a big houndfish and hooked up with several before finally landing a really nice 13lb (or so) albie – took some pictures and back he went! A few minutes later, Joel was in for the fight of his life – his Fin-S dissapeared in giant swirl and within 30 seconds the fish had stripped over 450 yards of line from the Penn 460 reel he was using. The albie, which I estimated at 20+lbs, pulled us around (i had to chase him down to get some of the line back) and after 15 or so minutes of fighting – the fish pulled the hook. A huge disapointment but Joel did a great job figthing his first albacore. There were a lot of albies in the water but they were rather scattered and the schools decided to head out after the wind switched to the east – hanging out/drifting in the area that they were “passing through” proved to be the best way to stay on them.
After playing with the albs we went over to one of the nearshore wrecks were we managed to hook several really nice spanish (or small kings) on our really light tackle but didnt manage to boat any – after doing this for a bit we gave floundering a try and were rewarded for our efforts. Brendan landed two beautiful 3-4lb fish on some on two of his first casts! We had a lot of breakoffs with both fish and structure, but with the wind building we went to work the beaches and inlet in leau of finding some fish a bit closer to shore.
Unfortunately the bite slowed in the afternoon but the morning produced us a lot of great bites – we didnt land a ton of fish today but everyone got to tangle with big, drag-peeling fish!
As I have been saying – fishing has yet to PEAK – come on down to the coast and see what fall fishing is all about!
