Little Tunny, Lotta Fight

Little Tunny, Lotta Fight (click image for detail)

 

 

This Article Was Featured In The December 14th Waterline Weekly.

 

Little tunny, lotta fight

 There's nothing false or tentative about the strike of a false albacore. It hits your fly with a frightening jolt. Then you stand back and watch your line, then half your backing, zoom through your rod guides.

Only after the resistance of all that line begins to slow the fish down do you dare start fighting it back toward the boat. Every strike goes this way. But the thrill never dulls.

I caught my first one, and then six more, a few weeks ago just off Nokomis beach. Our guide -- Mark Phelps, of Shore Thang Charters -- likes targeting false albacore more than any other fish. He knows them well, having grown up in the prime false albacore waters of North Carolina. He was 6 years old when he caught his first one, many fish ago.

A lot of people are surprised to hear false albacore show up in the Gulf. They do, but they're still an acquired taste in Florida, where they're still often confused with bonitos and dismissed as "boneheads," probably because they're fairly inedible.

Aside from Mark, there's just one other guide I know nearby who targets them -- Rick Grassett, of Snook Fin-addict Guide Service, and maybe not coincidentally another fisherman from the mid-Atlantic.

False albacore are well-known to fly fishers in southern New England, where they show up usually in September. The Northeast population are smaller fish, averaging maybe 5 or 6 pounds, like the ones you'll find in the Gulf.

The biggest false albacore are found off the Outer Banks and then again off the east coast of Florida, two places where the Gulf Stream gets closest to land. These fish average at about 11 pounds. The action is so good there that Cape Hatteras has become a regular stop for many of Montauk's fly fishing guides between the fall striper blitz and winters in the Florida Keys.

This is the time for false albacore in southwest Florida. They like slightly colder water than their cousins, Spanish mackerel. So they'll show up just after macks, around November and into December, and just before them in the spring, around the first of April.

I wasn't planning to fish on this Saturday morning, but a 30-second phone call the night before from a friend, Dr. Mike DiTaranto of Sarasota, convinced me otherwise. The three of us met on a slightly overcast, slightly chilly early morning near the Albee Road Bridge, in Nokomis.

This particular morning looked promising to Mark -- a strong onshore wind made the Gulf a little choppy, but Mark is convinced it blows the bait beachward and make sit easier prey for these tuna.

Once we got into the Gulf, we looked for actively feeding birds and crashing water. The choppiness made it hard to see surface activity, and there were just a few birds working in the distance. On overcast days like this one, the birds have a tougher time tracking the action, so it can be livelier than birds might indicate.

Then Mark said "whoa" in a tone of voice that meant something was either really wrong with the engine or really right with the fish. "It's solid with bait underneath us." He was looking at his fishfinder. A mass of minnows were below us.

We started to see fish thrashing at the surface. Mark knew in an instant they weren't Spanish mackerel but false albacore. We knew several seconds later, when we could see them jumping clear out of the Gulf. They were little footballs -- actually, not so little.

This wasn't the classic false albacore bite: Smooth water with fish taking bait on the surface. In those conditions, you can fish surface flies -- crease flies, poppers -- and get the added satisfaction of watching a powerful predator attack your offering.

These fish were rising to the surface sporadically. But they were there, all right -- I'd say four acres of "there." Mark set me up with an 8-weight rod rigged with a sink-tip floating line and a pink fast-sinking Clouser. ("I like pink when it's overcast," says Mark.) Mike got a spinning rod.

Working the sporadic surface crashes quickly proved fruitless. So Mark instructed me to move to the stern and pay out most of the fly line while Mike stood at the ready on the bow deck. We trolled through the water.

That's when I started getting hits. The six I ended up catching that morning have morphed into one very pleasant and slightly blurred memory. All I can tell you is that first run of a false albacore feels like no other fish.

Atlantic salmon are more unpredictable, smallmouth bass are crazier, redfish and big stripers are more brutish. I can't compare false albacore to bonefish or big tarpon, having caught neither (yet). But for pure straight-line speed, nothing approaches a false albacore.

Tom Gilmore's book "False Albacore: A Comprehensive Guide to Fly Fishing's Hottest Fish" (The Countryman Press, 2002) includes a chart comparing the speed of false albacore to other well-known gamefish. (Most of the facts in this article are from Gilmore's book.) False albacore can hit speeds of 40 mph -- a third faster than bonefish and more than twice as fast as bluefish.

The difference between false albacore (or little tunny, as they're often called) and most other gamefish is like the difference between you or me and an Olympic sprinter. You see this when you hold a little tunny in your hands.

They're designed for high performance. An absolutely symmetrical body from head to tail, for better speed (they're also called "footballs" for a reason). Tiny, smooth scales that eliminate surface friction; its skin feels like a dolphin's. Pectoral fins that fold into small grooves in the fish's body, making it perfectly streamlined when swimming.

The junction of the body and the tailfin is narrower than on any fish I've held in my hands -- a thick cord of pure muscle that can thrash the tail up to 30 cycles per second.

False albacore (and other tuna) also get a performance advantage from their blood: It's warm, not cold. Little tunny use an extremely high metabolic rate to warm their blood well beyond the surrounding water temperature. That lets fast-twitch muscles work faster and brains and other organs work more effectively in cold water.

Each fish fought almost exactly the same way: A long initial run and a long fight in, during which the fish would circle in a tighter and tighter radius until it tired out. This is far from a complaint. Unpredictable they're not -- just straightforward, very powerful fighters.

Little tunny have great eyes, too, which we found out as soon as the sun appeared from beneath the morning clouds. Suddenly the pink Clouser wasn't working, as if someone had turned off a switch.

"Time for the olive Clouser," said Mark. False albacore can be very selective, no doubt because of their superior eyesight. Mark finds olive works well for false albacore in bright conditions. In fact, he's a big believer in olive for almost every situation here -- a nice alternative to the chartreuse crowd.

I found the best method was to let the fly sink. The fish often took it on the descent, perhaps mistaking my fly for a wounded fish. I also believe most of the fish were deep in the water column (we were in 20 feet of water). Just like fishing for macks, the surface action makes you want to fish high, but you're usually better off fishing deep.

Tippets don't have to be particularly strong -- 12 to 20 pounds will cover the range of conditions. With great eyesight and no teeth to speak of, false albacore will be more apt to take your fly with a lighter tippet. Mark typically errs on the light side.

Gilmore thinks size is most important when selecting fly patterns for false albacore, then shape and color. The Clousers we used were identical in size and shape -- but as soon as that sun came out, pink didn't work and olive did.

That doesn't necessarily disprove Gilmore's advice. But one thing you can be sure of when targeting false albacore: Make sure you have plenty of backing. A good 200 yards. You could be well into it.

Please share your comments and stories with me at outdoordiary@comcast.net. By Joe Polidoro