Albie Season: 4 Tips for Catching More False Albacore

It’s albie season folks! Let’s just make sure that fact is clear in case anyone has been living under a rock for the past few weeks. The false albacore invaded our Long Island Sound waters heavily for a few days a couple weeks ago and then spread out to their normal haunts. If you know anything about albies, you know their “normal haunts” change from day to day, sometimes even from tide to tide. However, after speaking with many anglers who have lived here much longer than I have and have seen albie seasons come and go, so far it’s safe to say this is shaping up to be one of the best seasons in recent memory. With that in mind, here are a few tips to help you catch some more albies. Or at least to put you in the position to maybe see them, hopefully hook them, and possibly land them, because, you know…they’re albies!

1. Taste the Rainbow

            If you want to up your chances of having a memorable day going toe to tail with these speedsters, you have to be prepared to combat their finicky nature. Sometimes, it seems like a slim piece of flip-flop with a treble on the back would get blasted by albies. However, on some days, and I recently had a day like this in Cape Cod, there will be albies blitzing by the hundreds, you’ll get dozens of casts at them, and they just wont bite. It can be infuriating, especially since the hardest part of albie fishing sometimes feels like finding them in the first place. The best way to go into this situation confidently is to have baits in a wide variety of colors available to you.

            Personally, for me this means bringing epoxy jigs in 5 or 6 colors and at least 3 sizes. I usually start with 1-ounce silver or electric chicken colors, but if those aren’t doing it I know I have options. In 2021, I was fishing locally in the central Sound and was surrounded by blitzing albies all day. I was getting great shots, but just not hooking up. Finally, I asked another kayak angler, who I’d seen hook up 3 times, what he was using. Luckily, he was kind and said a green epoxy. I cut off my electric chicken color, tied on green, and wouldn’t you know it, my very next shot at them I hooked up and landed my only albie of the day. Sometimes, that’s just how they are.

            I usually rely heavily on epoxy jigs since they cast far and are easy to fish. However, I also have on hand Albie Snax in 2 different colors, Gravity Tackle 6-inch GT eels in about a dozen colors, and an egg float and fly rig with 5 different flies, which I usually have tied on my second rod. With this variety pack on hand, I feel confident that eventually, even if it takes all day, I can figure out what they’re chewing!

2- Downsize!

            As mentioned above, I usually start with a 1-ounce epoxy jig. I like the weight of it on my 7’6” medium fast action rod, and it casts a long way, which any albie angler knows is crucial when blitzes may only last 10-15 seconds or less. My go-to starting line strength is 15lb fluorocarbon leader, usually about 5-7 feet of it. I feel very confident using this setup, as it has caught many albies. However, one of the first adjustments I’ll make if I feel the fish are being finicky is to downsize both my lure and my line.

            Sometimes, albies want something that stands out color-wise or size-wise. But my first adjustment is to assume they want something smaller or shaped differently than what I’m throwing. So, that 1-ounce jig becomes a 7/8 or 5/8-ounce jig, and my 15lb fluorocarbon line gets snipped off and changed to 12lb line. Often, this will help initiate a bite. It might not seem like much, but for fish that have great eyesight and tend to get very keyed in on certain bait types, it can occasionally be all you need to start them chewing.

3- Ride it Out

            As a kayak angler, I am very much tied to the particular 2-3 miles nearest to the boat ramp I launched from. The term “run and gun” doesn’t really apply in a kayak. Sometimes, this inability to cover water simply means I miss out on a bite that is happening just out of my reach. This is especially true if I don’t have a ton of time to fish and can’t pack up and change launches, something I like to do during albie season from time to time. Often, I choose my spot and ride it out. And, more often than not, because of that persistence, I will be present at that spot during whatever albie action occurs on a given day.

What I notice though, and what this tip is geared towards, is a lot of anglers, kayak and boat, who prefer to swing through an area, eyeball it for a few minutes, then move. I can not tell you how many times the bite turns on within minutes after someone leaves. There just aren’t many days that these fish are active all day or all tide. So, when you visit any given area for only 15-20 minutes, the chances of seeing action might be really slim depending on the day. I encourage albie enthusiasts to ride it out in a certain spot for an hour or so. Really give yourself time to read the water, check the action or lack thereof, and compare it to tidal status…in short, be patient.

Albies can be absurdly hard to pinpoint. Collectively, I refer to the unique challenges they present as “albie mystique.” It’s part of the fun and part of why we pursue them so relentlessly. So, embrace the wait, give your spot time, and ride it out. If you visit the same spot at different times in the tide or on different weather days you’ll probably start to notice that they sometimes fall into a pattern. As I write this article I am currently enjoying an albie bite that seems to fire up for about 30-45 minutes before the end of an incoming tide and for about 30-45 minutes at the beginning of the outgoing tide, in one particular spot. It took literally dozens of hours to dial in, and let’s be honest, it’ll probably change tomorrow, but for now it’s useful, and that pattern was discovered by spending lots of time in one spot. If you like to run and gun, go for it, but less engine or paddle noise and more wait time often equals more albies.

4- Slow is Smooth, Smooth is Fast

            I love this saying. It has Navy SEAL origins, but I find that it applies very well to albie fishing as well. When I first started albie fishing and saw those insane splashes nearby I was an absolutely mess: poorly placed casts, sloppy casts that made my hooks tangle on my line, a bad windup that hit rods behind me, you name it. Albies just seem to bring out all of our worst and sloppiest habits as anglers. That’s part of what makes them so fun to target. The shift from tense calm to insane chaos is instant, and it can be hard to process the albie’s location, direction, and speed while also executing a precise, controlled cast. When I started uttering this phrase to myself, (yes, out loud), it dramatically improved the quality of my opportunities to hook into an albie.

            Essentially, the idea is that if you take your time and do things smoothly and in a controlled way, that smoothness in effect translates into speed. Thus: slow is smooth, smooth is fast. Now, when I see albies pop, I wind up my cast, but I also hold it. Questions are mentally pondered: Are they all out blitzing or are they traveling? How many fish seem to be there? If I cast and hook up, where is the nearest structure? Should I overcast the feed and bring it through them, or try to lead them like quarterback to a receiver? Who else has a cast in the water near me that I need to avoid? All of that happens before I rip in a cast. Of course, no tactic is foolproof with these fish, but once I started to process things in a more controlled, less chaotic way, I found myself with fewer tangles, fewer poor casts, and more prime opportunities for multi-albie days.

            In the end, these fish always have the upper hand over us. They’re fast, strong, smart, picky, and can see well. Comparatively, we are simply dumb and slow. But maybe that’s why we like chasing them so much. Maybe for a brief minute we feel we’ve somehow outsmarted these evolutionary masters who invade our shores for only a handful of magical weeks. I am shamelessly obsessed with them and I love playing their water-based chess match. If you love them too, hopefully these tips help you out!

Matt Stone is a saltwater kayak fisherman and writer based in Chester, Connecticut. He can be found on Instagram at @sunrisekayakfishing