Fished a day and a half with Don from Wilmington NC. Fishing was OK / not great. The Albies are really big the last couple of days though. Seems like a new batch of fish have shown up. These fish aren’t following the shrimp boats but are chasing bait in deeper water than the fish last week. Last week every shrimp boat had a load of fish on it. The last several days I’ve only found 1 shrimper with fish. Average size is 10lbs plus and we got into some 20 lb fish but lost the only one we hooked. This batch of False Albacore are really tide sensitive and like the last couple hours of either tide…..perhaps favoring the ebb tide a little bit. When we get on them they would chew pretty well. Most taking a fly or small diamond jig almost immediately on the presentation. Water has cooled over the recent windy spell. Had gotten down to 59/60 degrees until today when the nice weather has it climbing to 63/64 degrees. Weather today was beautiful. 70 degrees and light breeze. Back to the Albies though; these fish are running in huge schools and not just pods of a few fish. Were in some today blowing up bait in a school maybe 70-80’ wide. Seemed many times the size of a typical pod of Albies. Every school I found today was a big school of fish coming up from nowhere and blowing up bait. Many schools didn’t have birds on them at all. I think with some good weather forecast ahead of us that fishing will get back to strong again. I really like the water temp rising too. More tomorrow.
Where Did the Shrimp Boat Fish Go?
