To my surprise the albie fishing is still holding strong in many areas throughout Cape Cod. For some folks the fishing has been pretty epic over the past couple of weeks with certain boats registering double digit hookups each trip!
Double digit hookups are pretty darn impressive considering how finicky these speedy fish can be. Sometimes you'll be surrounded by albies all day and no matter what you do, you still can't get a bite. Luckily this has not been the case for a lot of folks as of late.
Who knows how long the solid albie fishing will last, however I would imagine it'll start slowing down pretty soon. All the more reason to get out there this week and do some casting or trolling for albies.
Since I have not been able to fish for albies yet this season, I asked Andrew Inches ( a member of the blog and an experienced albie fisherman) to put something together. Fortunately for you and I Andrew agreed, and wrote up the below post this past weekend.
Andrew is out on the water at this very moment so hopefully we'll get an even more recent update on the status of the albie fishing very soon. Until then enjoy the below guest blog post and thank you Andrew for putting this together.
False Albie Fishing off Cape Cod in October
This past Saturday and Sunday I was able to rally a crew from school to make the 6-hour trek back to the ocean. Fortunately we had read some reports that there were a good amount of schoolie stripers and false-albacore around the usual late summer hot spots.
We were up and steaming out of the New Bedford area at 6 am sharp. Our first target was the false albacore that had supposedly inundated the area over the past few weeks. We cruised around for a few miles without seeing any surface action, so we decided to set up a troll dedicated to false albacore.
We set up a small three-rod spread, all on light tackle spinning gear. Two of the rods had a pink squid on them; something that has been highly effective in the past and the third rod was set up with Daiwa Minnow with an Atlantic green mackerel finish. The trolling speed we like to use is between 4 and 6mph so we decided to stick to that at least to start.
In about an hour we managed 2 bonito on the Daiwa minnow-not bad! With a pair of bonito under our belts we decided to change locations.
Next stop was the southwestern edge of Quick’s Hole where we immediately saw albies busting hard on the surface. This is what we had hoped to see!
If you have ever fished for albies before you will know that they move around quite quickly. For me this is a really exciting type of fishing and comes in second only to chasing around football bluefin tuna in Cape Cod Bay.
Once you find a pod (or pods) of false albacore, it is important to keep an eye on when they go under, because they can literally come up anywhere. The best method for this style of fishing is getting on the fish as fast as you can, making sure not to spook them and then casting over them with a small shinny lure and dragging it through them with a little bit of a pop action on the rod.
Of course be sure to not speed around through any fleets of boats or get too close to other anglers. If it's real congested out there, sometimes the best method is to simply drift with the engines off through the general area where the ablies are feeding.
My favorite lure to use for this brand of albie fishing is the Deadly Dick. The ones we use are green, blue, and silver. This past weekend both the green and silver worked well, but if they are finicky (like they often are) green is usually the most successful. We caught 4 of these little tuna in the 8-12 pound class during about 30 minutes of being ‘on them’ and as soon as they had appeared, they were gone.
Since we were only a short distance away, we decided to hit Middle Ground, which when the tide is ripping almost always produces fish. When we got there, there was no surface action and no other boats, which was a big surprise especially for a weekend. We set up another trolling spread this time with 2 of the Daiwa Minnows and 1 deadly dick. Before we had the second line in the water we were on with a nice 15 lb albie. The solid action continued with 3 more albies all in the 12-15 lb class, until the rip died off. All of them hit the Daiwa minnow without hesitation.
That was pretty much it for us as we headed up to Devils Bridge and managed a small schoolie striper and two bluefish on a Super Strike Super N’ Fish lure. After that, the darkness started rolling in and we made the trip back across Buzzards Bay with little time to spare. All in all it was a really good day of albie fishing.
It was definitely worth the 6 hour drive from college for a great weekend of fishing.
Recommended Gear for Cape Cod False Albacore
For false albacore and bluefish we generally go with a simple and inexpensive setup. High end reels obviously work great, however they aren't really necessary in my opinion.
The Shimano Sahara spinning reel is what I choose for chasing false albacore off Cape Cod. We’ll often pair the reel with a $20 pole from Dick’s Sporting Goods/Sports Authority etc. We use a variety of different lures for albies, and depending on the day some work better than others.
Here are a few lures I have had success with in the past:
The Sebile-Magic Swimmer is in my opinion one of the best lures on the market. When the albies are being difficult, the best options are the White Pearl and Natural Shiner in the 3/4oz floating version.
The Daiwa SP Minnow is the lure we used this past weekend when trolling. Fortunately the SP Minnow worked really well for us while trolling-I have never used it casting, but I am sure it would work well casting too. The Green Mackerel color is the only color I have used.
Click here for information on the areas fished, and perennial October Cape Cod hot spots for false albies.
That's about it for now!
Good luck albie fishing,
Andrew Inches
