Tuna
09-15-2002, 10:08 AM
Fished Thursday, Friday and Saturday, three very different days in terms of the fish.
Thursday I took my sweet time starting , letting the winds die some before hitting the water at noon. The rips at the Point were still ugly then, but I went in to see what the birds were on. Saw 4 inch fish (maybe mullet?) airing as blues and albies chased them. However, I saw more blues than albies so moved on. Caswells has albies, blues and bass, and for the next 4 hours I saw big bass feeds from Caswells to the Point. Got a few albies, but had many blues beat them to the fly. Got a couple of bass too, and some video of the feeds. Really a beautiful afternoon, and wonderous bass feeds.
Friday morning I headed west, hoping to find bigger groups of albies. Fort Pond Bay - nothing; Goff Point - nothing; Tobacco Lot - nothing; Easstern Plains Point - nothing. Headed back to the point to great outer rips albie feeds. Winds seemed higher than NOAA predicted, and it was bouncy out there, but with Ted in sight and albies cooperative, I never made it close enough to shore to see if the bass feeds repeated. Ted told me there was a feed at Shagawong, so off to that feed for the rest of the afternoon. Around 5 pm it went from very good to unbelievable. I left around 6:30 'cause my hands could not handle another fish. Ended up 1 short of my best for the year. Some of the visuals of the day will remain with me for years, particularly the late albie madness before the sun went down.
Saturday my friend Bob McMahon joined me. When we got to the Point, we saw nothing. Putting around, bumped into Jeff Palmer, hooked up to an albie. He said he had figured with all the fish around, he could get albies on sinking line in the rips, and it was his fourth in the last hour. While Bob got one on spinning, I got one on sinking line (but busted the rod in the process). Bob and I then followed some small pods on the surface in the rips, but nothing much really took form. We then headed south and spent more than an hour drifting near shore towards Turtle Cove. Picked up a nice bass while Bob hooked another albie on spinning, then Bob switched to the fly and each drift at least one of us would hook up on albies. They would surface in small pods from time to time, but it was really more fishing the structure than targeted specific pods. We looked in the rips several more times, but no real good albie surface action developed at any time we looked. Switched to Shagawong a bit later and had a brief killer rise of albies, but it was around 5 pm and an armada of returning party and charter boats seemed to disperse them. We left with some fish still around and at least an hour of light left, so it might have gotten better later. Although it was nothing compared to the hours of great surface action Friday, we managed a good number of albies partially because of the time we spent near Turtle Cove fishing a zone versus surface fish and partially because I got lucky on some of the few rip pods we had seen.
Thursday I took my sweet time starting , letting the winds die some before hitting the water at noon. The rips at the Point were still ugly then, but I went in to see what the birds were on. Saw 4 inch fish (maybe mullet?) airing as blues and albies chased them. However, I saw more blues than albies so moved on. Caswells has albies, blues and bass, and for the next 4 hours I saw big bass feeds from Caswells to the Point. Got a few albies, but had many blues beat them to the fly. Got a couple of bass too, and some video of the feeds. Really a beautiful afternoon, and wonderous bass feeds.
Friday morning I headed west, hoping to find bigger groups of albies. Fort Pond Bay - nothing; Goff Point - nothing; Tobacco Lot - nothing; Easstern Plains Point - nothing. Headed back to the point to great outer rips albie feeds. Winds seemed higher than NOAA predicted, and it was bouncy out there, but with Ted in sight and albies cooperative, I never made it close enough to shore to see if the bass feeds repeated. Ted told me there was a feed at Shagawong, so off to that feed for the rest of the afternoon. Around 5 pm it went from very good to unbelievable. I left around 6:30 'cause my hands could not handle another fish. Ended up 1 short of my best for the year. Some of the visuals of the day will remain with me for years, particularly the late albie madness before the sun went down.
Saturday my friend Bob McMahon joined me. When we got to the Point, we saw nothing. Putting around, bumped into Jeff Palmer, hooked up to an albie. He said he had figured with all the fish around, he could get albies on sinking line in the rips, and it was his fourth in the last hour. While Bob got one on spinning, I got one on sinking line (but busted the rod in the process). Bob and I then followed some small pods on the surface in the rips, but nothing much really took form. We then headed south and spent more than an hour drifting near shore towards Turtle Cove. Picked up a nice bass while Bob hooked another albie on spinning, then Bob switched to the fly and each drift at least one of us would hook up on albies. They would surface in small pods from time to time, but it was really more fishing the structure than targeted specific pods. We looked in the rips several more times, but no real good albie surface action developed at any time we looked. Switched to Shagawong a bit later and had a brief killer rise of albies, but it was around 5 pm and an armada of returning party and charter boats seemed to disperse them. We left with some fish still around and at least an hour of light left, so it might have gotten better later. Although it was nothing compared to the hours of great surface action Friday, we managed a good number of albies partially because of the time we spent near Turtle Cove fishing a zone versus surface fish and partially because I got lucky on some of the few rip pods we had seen.