I know I’ve said this several times before, but this year has had some of the most amazing days of false albcore action that I (and many others) have ever seen. Giant baitballs, thousands of fish – you name it the action is incredible.

Today was the hallmark of this season (so far). I went out with my buddy Captain Scott Crocker (www.shacklefordcharters.com) in the hopes of fishing – we had no real plans. Outside of the inlet, we came across giant pods of pelicans and gulls – covering acres and acres of water. There were dozens of these “pads” in sight – our first thought was shrimp trawlers but there weren’t any around. We motored over to the closest pad of birds and once some of the birds made a hasty exit – it became clear what was going on. There were giant baitballs of bay anchovies- within minutes of enterting the scene, the bait took refuge under my hull and lower unit. The bait was so thick, we could scoop up several pounds of baitfish at a time using my live-well net. When the albies crushed the bait pod, dozens of anchovies would fly through the air, over the gunnels of my boat. If you looked down, you could see hundreds of circling albcore in the clear water.

The fishing was too automatic – as soon as the fly hit the water, you were hooked up. Scott fought his first fish (a 16lb albie on a 9wt) for over 75 minutes while i fought and landed 5 5-8lb fish (on a 10wt) during that time. After scott brought in his fish, we decided to use the weirdest flies possible – out came some of the ugliest (and nastiest) poppers and silicone poppers i tied a while back – it just took several pops on the surface and WHAM. We landed over 15 fish between us – with all of the fish that took the crease flies and poppers in the 12-16lb range. It was more fun to actually watch the blitz than fish – in 3 hours, we never really moved – even after the albies ate the entire baitball under my hull, there were so many albies in the area that casting in the blind would produce quick hookups…

I’m running post-thanksgiving and a pre-striper special on albacore – check out my website for details.

I leave you with some pictures…

This last one is a bit blury – but with all the albies tearing through the bait ball, it was almost impossible to take a picture of it.