Editor’s note: One morning a few weeks back I was sitting at work when I got a text
from a buddy of a false albacore laying on a slab of granite. We didn’t know it
at the time, but Aaron Swanson was putting together one of the best fishing
outings of his life, all to himself, on a day where he originally set out to do
something completely different. That’s how it goes sometimes. In this guest
post, Aaron takes us through that memorable day on the rocks.
I rolled up to the launch at
5:50. There wasn’t a single boat trailer
in the lot. Not a great sign. A stiff
breeze hit me as I stepped out of my car.
Shit. The wind I’d hoped wouldn’t
be as bad as forecast was worse instead.
I’d been keeping an eye on weather predictions since the previous day, counting
on a four or five-hour window before things got really nasty and the seas built
beyond a point I’d feel safe in a kayak. The sweet smell of saltwater and baitfish
driving into my nostrils provided me with a reality check. I was not going to have a comfortable window.
In the darkness I noticed a
single truck in the lot on my way in, but didn’t see the guy approaching until
he was right on top of me. He was eager
to talk. He had been there since five hoping for a quick window before he had
to work. Like me, he checked the weather
and saw the morning as his only shot for the rest of the week. He fished the spot regularly and we were there
to angle for the same little bonito that had taken up residence in the area. We compared notes. I asked the question I already knew the
answer to.
“No albies,” he said.
The guy glanced up at the kayak
lashed down to my roof rack. “If you can hear the waves in here, it’s that much
worse out there,” he said, turning his gaze toward the islands sheltering us
from the full extent of the blow.
“I’ve got a Hobie Pro-Angler 12,”
he said.
“I’m sure you love it,” was my
overtly jealous reply. We went on to
talk gear and other kinds of fishing. I finally
looked sheepishly up at my buddy’s wife’s kayak up on my roof.
“Yeah, I’m just getting into the
kayak thing fishing-wise,” I said. After
a few more pleasantries, he was off.
Headed to work. A fishless
morning.
I stood there alone, the wind’s chill
suddenly apparent. I hopped back in my vehicle, stared at the chop lapping
against the boats swaying in the marina, and contemplated my next steps. I
hadn’t seriously considered an alternative plan to the kind of fishing I’d come
to do. I thought hard about taking the
kayak off the roof and paddling out to the cut to get my own read on how
uncomfortable the current conditions would be in my loaned, sit-in kayak. I couldn’t shake the feeling that it would
only be a waste of time.
I threw a shore-casting rod in the
car the night before, yet wasn’t outfitted for a day of full-on
surfcasting. I had Crocs on. While I
knew a few spots where I might have a chance at some bonito from shore, the prospect
of that working out was moderate at best.
My thoughts changed direction completely. After all, I really wanted to catch albies
but their sporadic appearances over the last few weeks didn’t present many good
bets. I needed to do some driving. I’d head to a place that I’d heard barely a positive
word about in weeks. At least I could fish
there in Crocs.
Flags that looked like they were
stapled to sheet of plywood greeted me. The new destination proved to have even
snottier conditions than I left back home. A couple of guys coming back to their
cars from first-light forays didn’t have good news. Their slumped shoulders and slow steps told
the story before they opened their mouths.
“A lot of birds,” one guy said.
“Just birds,” I asked?
“Just birds,” he nodded.
I strung up the shore rod, threw
on an extra layer and headed out. The
mat gray sky hid whatever was left of the sunrise. When I hit the beach and climbed up on the
wall of rocks the full force of the southwest wind hit me. This was big water. The swell was wind-whipped and the chop broke
in little patches of whitewater that would obscure the pops splashes and
porpoises I’d be looking for. I encountered
a couple guys catching school bass and cocktail blues as I hopped along the
huge stones. That kind of activity didn’t
stop me from my mission out to the end of the pile.
There were a few anglers out at
the end. Some younger guys, also hooking
small bluefish, and an older gentlemen who was struggling with his bottom
fishing. He had to work to keep his rig
from washing back into the rocks or fouling with weed. Eyeing my rig, he asked what I was there to
catch.
“Bonito, I guess,” I said.
He chuckled. “No bonito here
since first week of September,” he told me.
I could only laugh. While I was skeptical of the veracity of his
statement, it sure did seem dead out there. I hung around for a while. The older gentlemen told me what he’d caught
earlier in the week. Told me the wind and the waves were bad. He asked about my lure, hung up on my rod’s
collector guide and where I’d bought it.
An hour passed without a cast. I
watched the younger anglers continue to catch bluefish and stuff them in a big
black garbage bag.
The heaving gray-green water, salty
breeze, and bird activity were all pleasant to take in but I started to get
bored of standing and waiting. I tied on
a small swimming plug like those the guys were getting blues on and made my way
back towards shore. Every few stones I
stopped to cast and contemplate. The
retrieves with the plug found no takes.
I wasn’t that surprised, I wasn’t really invested. My thoughts turned to what I might try next. About a third of the way back on the jetty, I
noticed what could have been few funny pops on the surface. It was hard to say looking at the merengue
whipped tops of the big rollers but it was enough to focus my attention.
I watched a while longer,
figuring my mind was playing tricks on me, seeing what I wanted it to see. It
wasn’t, there they were. False albacore. A good-sized school porpoised through the
wave tops, their pace and direction deliberate.
I cast at them with the SP Minnow I’d tied on looking for a consolation
catch. The wind knocked it right down,
easily fifteen yards short of where the lure needed to land to intercept
them. A second attempt with the plastic
swimmer also failed to reach but at least they were here.
Turning my back to the wind, I
tied up a new leader and proper tin. I
knew if I couldn’t see the fish feeding I’d be more likely to take my time and
tie good knots. I turned back around
bail open, rod cocked, 60-gram white Colt Sniper ready to fire. The fish had gone down. I waited and walked farther out on the jetty
following the path the fish had taken.
They were up again, back where they started and headed my way. I waited until they were in range to
cast. Within three cranks of the reel handle,
I was on.
I’m hooked into a little tunny
and I wish I had a picture of my face because the shit-eating grin I had on had
to be huge. We had a good albie
fight. I made my way down the ice-slick
rocks below the water line, grabbed my leader and hoisted my first false
albacore of 2019 up on the rocks. The
colors on the fish buzzed electric blue and green like a neon window sign. As I took a moment to appreciate and document
the fish, it was hard to ignore the continued surface feed happening right in
front of me. I got the fish unhooked,
tossed it back and was into another within seconds. That fish, with a spirited effort late in the
fight, managed to ride a wave into the rocks.
As I slid down to retrieve it, the leader parted from the tin. The time it took to tie on a new one was the
only thing that slowed me from hooking, playing and landing my next fish. Another followed immediately after that.
The fishing was red hot, like you
read about. Other than one guy I could
see a ways back down the jetty furiously cranking a lure, I had these fish to
myself. There were a lot of them. They were unbothered and feeding on the surface
for long periods. One specimen coughed up some evidence as to
why they might have been so easy to fool.
They were feeding on all kinds of fare—spearing, squid, tiny bay
anchovies. The bait buffet precluded
their often-picky predicament and led to the easiest albie fishing I had ever
experienced. A well-timed cast and a
fast retrieve were all it took to hook up.
By now, the group of younger
anglers had figured out what was going on and although they had the right lures
to get the job done, they weren’t hooking up.
After crossing lines with my new friends a couple of times (twice during
fighting fish) I noticed they were tying their braided line directly to their baits. Even though these fish were gorging and
unpicky, they were still albies after all.
I asked the guy I was tangled with if they had any fluorocarbon. He indicated they were without leader
material of any kind so I cut him a six feet of twenty-pound fluoro and told
him to cut it into three two-foot sections.
I went back about catching fish
in between dodging spray and keeping an eye out for any especially large
waves. The beginning of the outgoing
tide pushing against the wind had really stood the water up. The conditions were as exhilarating as the
fishing. The sun broke through the
clouds for a short while. Now I could see
schools of fish riding through the waves chasing bait. There were dead squid everywhere, carried
along the current. I witnessed one of
the coolest hits I’ve ever experienced. I saw a fish break from the school to chase
down my lure. When it caught up with it,
the fish stopped on a dime, twisting sideways in the illuminated emerald water
and exploded in a silver flash as my drag sang.
I started to realize I was
approaching landing double-digit numbers of fish, not something I’d experienced
before. I’d had solid albie fishing from
the rocks but the catch rate I was experiencing was downright ridiculous. At some point after I reached and exceeded
the landmark, I looked over to see the guys I’d given leader material to now
hooked up and playing fish. They were
yelling excitedly to each other. Wide
smiles gave away their amazement at seeing the drags on their reels scream
faster than what I could guess was anything they had ever experienced. They
weren’t yelling like that when they were bailing bluefish earlier in the
morning.
The onset of mid-day brought
about some changes. More anglers showed
up. Fish were breaking into smaller
pods. The feeds changed, surface attacks
were less deliberate and more frenzied.
This was starting to look more like typical albie fishing I was
accustomed to seeing. Observation,
rather than rushed casting, revealed patterns the schools were following. I changed position and watched the fish do
big figure eights along the jetty. As I
picked away at a few more fish, I found a surprise. What I thought to be a small albie turned out
to be a bonito, the species I’d originally intended to target when I’d left the
house that morning. That catch really
felt like a cherry on top of an already impressive day.
By the time I landed what was my
biggest fish of the day, the bite and conditions had grown challenging. The good casts that were sure to connect
hours earlier were now ignored. The
dropping tide left the water level lower against the rocks. This change in angle combined with the heavy
breeze and swell, made it difficult to put an accurate cast on feeding fish and
keep your lure in the water for most of the retrieve. I
watched the increasing number of anglers cast, fly and spin, their presentations
untouched. Nobody was hooking up.
I ventured back out toward the
tip of the jetty to see if getting away from the crowd would help, but the
scene was same. Picky fish. Tough conditions. I encountered a fly guy on my way back. He told me that the fish had lockjaw. He said it didn’t matter he was throwing
flies “this big” motioning a microscopic size with his fingers.
“It sucks,” he said carrying on
his way.
I didn’t have the heart nor the
want to tell him what he’d missed that morning.
I’d caught 14 or 15 albies depending on if we’re counting the one lost
to the rocks. The bonito was the icing
on my day’s cake. I told my wife the
night before I’d pick the kids up from daycare and I still had a good walk and
a better drive ahead of me. I floated
back over the boulders along the jetty.
Once past all the other anglers I stopped to look back, take a moment,
reflect, and try to commit as much of what I had just experienced to memory.
On the drive home, I considered
the trajectory of my day. Starting in
once place, ending in another. In
fishing, especially when alone, I try to walk a very fine line. It’s important to have a program. Specific plans
paired with experience and timely knowledge can make all the difference between
skunks and memorable days. The other
side of that coin is willing to be flexible and take whatever the day throws at
you. I think about the guy I spoke to in
the lot that morning. The one with a vastly
superior fishing platform to the one I planned to use. Seeing him bail on the same plans I had was a
sign for me to make another choice. Thankfully,
I was willing to pay attention and the choice I made led to one of the most fun
days of fishing I’ve ever experienced.
Sometimes you just have to tip your cap and be grateful that you stepped
in shit.
