Saltwater Fly Fishing

Cape Lookout False Albacore

    With all the media hype this fishery has received many fly anglers were disappointed with the '99 season.  Please do not count me among the disappointed.  Big schools of breaking fish were often hard to find. But, there were plenty of false albacore to catch.

      I caught false albacore on every trip during this past season.  There were more than a few day when it was not easy, and there were many days I would have surly failed with the use of chum.

      The chum of choice with most guides and local angler has been frozen glass minnows.  Five pound block packages are available from most area fly and tackle shops.  Ten pounds would get you through most days if you were careful.  It would not be hard to consume 25 pounds or more in a day if you were trying to keep fish around your boat all the time.

      I tried several other forms of chum last year, including:  shrimp heads, and freshly ground menhaden and jumping mullet.   I was very disappointed with the results with the ground menhaden.  Freshly ground jumping mullet produced excellent results.

     Shrimp heads produced the most surprising results.  We tried grinding them, but they were much more effective whole.   With a little advanced notification the shrimp heads could be acquired from almost any commercial packing house for little or no cost.  Best thing,  the "alberts" loved them.

      Chumming with the shrimp head was different than other forms of chum we tried.  The shrimp head would sink rather quickly, and all the false albacore were caught well behind the boat and on fast sinking lines.

      Having shrimp heads regurgitated into the boat confirmed that the albacore did eat our chum.

    Following in the wakes of the draggers is an alternative/supplement to chumming.  You can wait for a dragger to haul back and begin to push it's cull overboard.  An alternative method is to get behind a larger shrimp boat.  The larger boats are required to equip their nets with FEDs, Fish Exclusion Devices.

      Shrimpers that are equipped with FEDs will have an almost continuous stream of dazed and/or injured fish in their tow path.   Presenting baitfish patterns on fast sinking lines into the "muds" behind these larger draggers will produce fish.  The only drawback is that the predators are seldom as concentrated as they might be behind a dragger has hauled back and is culling it's by-catch.  This technique is preferable to just hanging about and waiting for the next dragger to haul back.

      You can also increase you hook-up numbers by immediately deploying your own chum anytime you get a strike in the wake of a dragger.     

Harry Hall   

oo

o