Yesterday Albies, Today Big Blues!

the first blue that I caught
at least eight pounds

I am on a surf fishing roll that I haven't been on in years. I've been out four times in the last two weeks before today. In those times times, I've had two really good striper nights, got rained out by a thunderstorm that wouldn't quit, and caught the albies yesterday.

Since all I did was think of albies for the past twenty four hours, it was a no brainer that I was heading back to the ocean after work today. My plan was to check out a few spots on my way to where I caught the albies yesterday. I didn't plan on fishing for more than five minutes at each place. Either I saw action or I was leaving. After all, I felt confident, the albies would be at the same spot today.

At the second place I went to I was standing on a high rock above the water. I looked down into the crystal clear water and saw a huge school of bait ( four inch peanut bunker) After my disbelief I looked up, there was a wall of baitfish that stretched out twenty five feet from the shoreline as far as I could see. I looked down into the water again and saw false albacore swimming right through this wall of bait. This got my heart racing and I started casting.

Within minutes I had a hook up. The fish was strong, but I could feel the tell tale head shakes of a bluefish. Since I haven't seen any blues this year, I brushed it off and thought it was a hard fighting albie. I was waiting the whole fight for it to run in on me like albies do. Then my fish jumped out of the water. It was a ten pound bluefish. Soon after it popped the hook.

I never left the spot. For the next three hours I was fishing into all this bait. I hooked up with several more large bluefish (all over eight pounds,most over 10). I landed seven. Since I had seen he albies and knew they were around, I was targeting them with lures that they would hit. For the most part all my damage was done on a wooden egg/ zoom fluke combo. Although I never caught an albie, I was more than happy to have big bluefish as a "bycatch.

 If I would have used a popper I would have caught blues on almost every cast. I know this because I watched a guy catch one after another on a popper. Usually he had a fish on before it made the third splash. None the less I was content to catch a few blues on my single hooked lure.

At times there was so much bait, I could not fish. No matter how slow I reeled in my fluke or how high I kept it on the surface, it would snag a peanut bunker. Fish were breaking everywhere and I had no chance of catching anything because of all the snagged menhaden.  I moved a couple hundred yards to my right , there was still plenty of bait, but it wasn't so concentrated, I started catching fish again.

There is so much bait in Rhode Island waters right now. Stripers and blues have been around, and now blues have joined the party, this is turning out to be a terrific fall. No one can predict if the bait will be here one day to the next, so who knows, it might be gone tomorrow. That said, if ever there was a fall to make a few trips to the ocean, this might be the one!