Albies will clobber jerkbaits, particularly when cast at the "heat of the moment."

The seven-mile run “across the pond” didn’t take long on glassy seas and the sunny, calm conditions were perfect for spotting busting fish. Friends Albert Buchman and Mike Kai joined me for a rather civilized 1 p.m. launch out of Waterford, Connecticut, and we crossed eastern Long Island Sound, a deep, tide-swept stretch of water, with nothing more than a ferryboat wake to navigate.

Our first stop was a small rip near Orient Point on the North Fork of Long Island, and we hadn’t even come off plane when white water erupted up ahead on the uptide side of the rip line.

“Albies!” yelled Albert Buchman over the outboard’s growl. He pointed off the starboard bow while tightening his grip on the console rail.

“See the birds?”

A knot of terns worked the surface about 300 yards away, and as we approached the rip we could see the metallic flashes of feeding fish. Powering down, I swung us upcurrent of the froth and cut the motor well outside casting range.

“I don’t want to spook ’em,” I replied to Mike’s inquisitive look. “Grab your rods, guys. We’re gonna drift into ’em fast.”

Because the fish were feeding along a rip, which concentrates and holds forage in one area, the pod stayed up longer than they would in open water. That gave us a chance to drift into the strike zone and test unweighted soft-plastic jerkbaits, which many albie-chasers now swear by. The jerkbaits plopped amid the marauding school. I cranked my reel for a few turns while twitching the rodtip overhead to create a deadly, injured-bait action. I felt an abrupt tug, and then the spool spun like a tire on ice.

Al and Mike had simultaneous hookups and instantly their lines crossed. Al, in a keen balancing display, ran alongside the gunnel, ducked under Mike’s rod and maneuvered around the bow with his rod bent double and held way off to the side. Unfortunately, Mike’s line was soon hit by another fish and parted.

After ten minutes of give-and-take, our two remaining albies began cork-screwing under the boat—a sure sign of fatigue—while our forearms vibrated from their fiercely beating tails. Soon we pumped the little tunas up from the depths, and Mike deftly tailed them for us. After a few fast photos we plunged them back into the steely green water.

Matching Does Not Guarantee Catching

In the Northeast, you must fish an artificial or fly that closely resembles what albies are feeding on. But matching does not always guarantee catching. Traditional false albacore lures include flat and elliptical lures such as 3⁄8- to 3⁄4-ounce Kastmasters and Hopkins jigs, which imitate baby bunker and butterfish, or long and thin lures like Deadly Dicks and Need-L-Eels, which imitate silversides, anchovies and sand eels. The smaller the metal lure the better. But the problem with matching the hatch is that a little, shiny lure is just one of thousands of small, shiny objects moving among large schools of baitfish. Most of the time the tin is simply overlooked. Frustrated anglers have discovered that larger lures can pay off at times, particularly the soft-plastic jerkbaits that are a staple among striper fishermen. They can be deadly on albies.

Albie school ravaging bait at the surface.

Strangely, the most productive soft plastics look nothing like the tiny baitfish the albies usually target. The reason for their tremendous success is probably due to their amazingly lifelike crippled prey appearance, which triggers an instinctive attack by albies.

Retrieves and Rigging

The key is to fish them without added weight while the fish are blasting baits on top. By twitching the rodtip while retrieving, you get that “walk-the-dog” action that looks like a stunned or crippled baitfish, and looks like an easy mark to a hungry albie. The drawback is that these unweighted plastic baits don’t cast very far, which is a good reason to position your boat upwind of a school on a breezy day. In a pinch, you can add a splitshot or two, a small bullethead sliding sinker, or one of the new hook-weighting systems made expressly for soft-plastic baits (featured in Gear Bag, in the February/March 2005 issue of SWA).