I went out today with some friends to check out a variety of things – among them large weedlines less than 5 miles from the inlet, etc. All of this produced nothing. With no fish in site we decided to check out the reported action on the east side. It was pretty calm so i was able to shoot over the slough with ease – let me add that I HATE THE SHOALS. Anyway, within minutes of crossing, we ran into our first school of breaking fish. All three of us made casts, all three hooked up – big 3-5lb blues came to the boat. After we hooked a few more, we made our way to the next cloud of birds – this time it was small (12-14″) spanish. We caught a few and decided to move on. A buddy told me that they’d been finding some albacore north of the sumerlin, so i decided to start motoring that way. Five minutes later, and after barely going anywhere, we were amongst a very large school of busting fish that was moving very quickly – ALBIES!!! The fish were STARVING and hit everything we threw at them. The albies were not big – only 6-10lbs – but they were all over the place. When we were on the fish, it was constant double and triple hook-ups!

These were not scattered pods of albies – everytime we landed our fish and wanted to get back on them – there were between 3-5 busting pods within site. The pods were very big. It’s normal to start seeing small groups of fish this early but these guys were out en force – if the water wasn’t 80 degrees I would have thought it was November! No fly anglers on board today, unfortunately – and i am still wishing i had the 10 weight with me…

I’m going to let the pictures tell the story…