This week I had two days with Wright and Wright – two of my favorite, regular clients. On Thursday we somewhat struck out – we missed the Bonito bite by about 30 seconds (they were busting for awhile – until I was about 300 yds away from them) and disapeared for the rest of the day. But it was a beautiful day and we managed a bunch of nice bluefish and came inside to try out the seamullet and gray trout bite. We managed two very nice mullet (one was 1.5lbs) but they werent there like the week prior – we did catch probably 150-200 small gray trout (two at a time at times). Slow day but we caught fish…
On Friday we decided to give it a shot wind or no wind. With it blowing 15 out of the WSW and slowly building, we left the dock over an hour before sunrise and made the run in the 3-5 foot seas, getting to the bonito before sunup. They started busting within seconds of arriving – and we had one on immeadiatly. Wright #2s first Bonito – a nice 7lb fish! While there was a huge school busting it was so rough we had trouble getting to them and placing good casts – so we went to trolling. The bite was over very quickly – but Wright #1 did manage his first Bonito too! His 7lb fish fell for a yo-zuri DD on the troll…and after we landed that fish we decided to shorten the day and hit the inlet before the tide started to go out and thus make things really ugly.
But when we got to the inlet we were met by a very welcome friend – False Albacore! There were nice pods of BIG MOOSE ALBIES busting big baits all over the inlet – the problem is that they were very up and down and required a split second accurate cast. We worked an area for probably 10 minutes getting a couple shots when a big pod surfaced 20 yds off the bow. Wright #2 has his back to the fish and when i yelled them out – his “fishing gene” turned on and with an incredible back-arm cast, he put a stingsilver literally in one of the albacore’s mouth! He fought the beast for about 15 minutes – when we got the pig albie (est 20lbs) to the gunnel, she shook her massive head and the lure flew out just as i was about to grab the leader. We’ll go ahead and call that a catch though đŸ˜‰
We spent the next couple hours chasing pods and breaking several fish off – the problem is that they were so big and strong they would bust the line on their initial runs, bend hooks straigth – you name it. After about 90s minutes of this – Wright #1 got his fish. A BEAST that took 25 minutes to land and pulled us almost a mile with the tide. Between 16 and 17lbs, she dwarfed her cousin, the Bonito. After that we chased a few more pods and called it half-day.
What a great day! Two “nearshore tuna slams!” (okay -so i made that term up). When I loined up the fish at the dock – the two Wrights were amazed at how appetizing Bonito flesh looks. Seriously, Bonito is one of the only fish you’ll clean and look at that meat…and almost want to eat it on the cleaning table. It’s that good! Thanks a lot guys – I can’t wait to get you two on board again!
With the SW Blows and warm days the Bonito bite is just going to get better and better – and expect to see some albacore during the next week or two.
