Today was day 2 with Greg and Pat of the Virginia fly fishers and we were after more albies on the fly. The fish were a bit less scattered that Tuesday the 16th but still hard to get on. But. I combined some creative driving with general knowledge of albacore behavior (which i owe mostly to my friend, Captain Gordon Churchill) and we procured some good fish. The albies were pushing bait right onto the shoreline, so we drifted behind the breakers working our flies – waiting for the fish to appear.
Despite my warnings, greg learned first-hand how albacore can destroy $400 worth of tackle in less than 10 seconds (amazing fish, aren’t they?). If you let too much fly line out, in preparation for a long cast, and an albie hits in the short – you have a good chance of having a knot in your fly line …and within seconds of the albie striking Greg’s fly I hear – THUNK THUNK THUNK SNAP as the knotted fly line busted out his guides, snapped and then rocketed the last section of his fly rod into the drink. But, I whipped out one of my own 10weights (hey, albies breaking rods happens all too often) and within minutes, we had a fish on! We boated several nice albies today (all fish were 15+), watched one eat the fly three feet from the boat and had several broken hooks, etc.
We also stopped at a little trout hole of mine and caught many nice 2-3lb specks as well as several short pups. I would have had pictures of the fish – but i left my camera in the car today. But i did take a picture of three fat trout we kept…
