Get an early taste of fall fishing by chasing the first albies of the season!
It happens every year. Corporate food and drink industry advertisements begin to bombard the airwaves and social media platforms in August. The ads are timed for the coming season but something about them feels off. While we’re still squarely in the throes of late summer, the promise of fall is made. Products that pair best with crisp fall mornings are promoted in the sweltering heat. Pumpkin spice season has begun.
A similar phenomenon has cropped up within a portion of the angling community in recent years. For a certain subset of anglers, there is a buzz about fishing opportunities yet to come. Cravings for the season ahead are discussed giddily across the internet and pop up in the form of TBT posts on social media. And although there are plentiful options for great summer fishing in the present, it seems many folks can’t wait for the future. From the time the first chub mackerel are spotted, word creeps in that hardtail season is upon us. As far as fishermen are concerned, albies are the new pumpkin spice!
Changing Times
False albacore are pelagic visitors to our waters here in the Northeast. They spend the majority of their time offshore and sometimes show up inshore when the water is at its warmest and swarms of small bait are present. Their arrival can be very unpredictable. Some years they appear around coastal New England in early August. Other times they don’t make their first appearances until October. Sometimes, they don’t show up in appreciable numbers at all.
Their fickle nature is what makes albie fishing exciting and has created this cult-like following in recent years. The combination of incredible power and speed packed into a relatively small package, coupled with their finicky approach to taking a lure, makes them an incredibly addictive species to target. Warming waters through the past decades have seemingly increased the regularity with which these offshore visitors take up residence along coastal New England. Whereas at one time maybe the Elizabeth Islands and Montauk were the places you could most reliably count on seeing albies, they now appear in greater numbers and can be found from southern Cape Cod down through the rest of the Northeast.
The Speed Of Information
Warming waters and bigger schools of little tunny are not all that’s changed in recent decades. The evolution of social media and its relationship with the angling community has driven interest in these fish. There are as many takes on how social media has impacted fishing as there are people using it. One thing is for certain though, the amount of information and how quickly it is shared has exploded. Waves of posts can seemingly move faster than the fish themselves. A post from a charter captain on Martha’s Vineyard can set off a chain reaction of anglers discussing hardtail season from Massachusetts, down through Connecticut before a fish ever swims into our waters.
An entire niche industry has sprouted up with the boom in anglers who chase hardtails. There was a time when nearly every albie fisherman was throwing a Deadly Dick. The tried-and-true classics from years ago, like Maria jigs and Zoom Super Flukes, have been pushed aside by the rows upon rows of newer tins, epoxy jigs, and soft plastics that now line the walls of bait and tackle shops. These jigs and plastics sell like hotcakes as soon social media starts buzzing with a single picture of an angler holding an albie.
All of these elements of change have amalgamated into what seems to be an old and new phenomenon all at once. It will be mid-August and someone on Nantucket will post a picture of a false albacore on Instagram. Before the day is over, anglers who target Buzzards Bay will be buzzing on the platform and the fever will quickly spread down through Rhode Island and Connecticut. All of the hopeful discussion and heightened anticipation centers around one goal – being the first to get in on the action the moment it moves into your area. Pumpkin spice season enters its full fury.
Heat Map
The start of the albie season has a reputation for being a moving target, in New England though, all eyes will typically be on Nantucket Sound to call out the first battle cry. In just the past three seasons alone, we’ve seen the first push of albies hitting these waters at different times in August from the 9th to the 21st. Where they go from there and how they get there is another question mark that seems to be unique to each season; in 2022 for example, the fish showed in Nantucket Sound early, filtered in along the Elizabeth Islands, but never really made a full transition to Buzzards Bay, which is typically a very good area toward the end of the month or the first half of September. Last season also saw an early and strong push of albies in Rhode Island and those August fish in Rhody were some of the biggest albies we’ve seen in the Ocean State in quite some time.
Massachusetts
If your goal for 2023 is to catch an August albie, you’re best bet is definitely going to come from Nantucket Sound. One of the first places we see albies showing in New England is the south side of Martha’s Vineyard. “They usually show during the second half of August, but some years they come earlier,” said Doug Asselin of Dick’s Bait and Tackle in Oak Bluffs, adding “those first fish are almost always caught in boats around the Hooter or off of Chappy.” Local captains like Skip Bandini from Fish Bandit Charters running out of Falmouth say that the area outside Waquoit Bay and Nobska Point are two of the most reliable spots to cross paths with the first albies of the season, but they might pop up anywhere between those two locations as well. Once those fish are in and established, the rips off of Monomoy can also hold lots of albie promise.
Rhode Island
The timing in Rhode Island is a little tighter if you’re going to score in August; it’s very rare to see them before 25th—but last year the first fish showed up around the 10th! The Ocean State seems to be definitively split down the middle when choosing a place to look for an early one, anywhere west of the West Wall seems to be a waste of time until at least September 1; most years it’s closer to the 10th. But the stretch of water from the West Wall east to Sakonnet Point hosts the bulk of the state’s early schools. “Those first schools tends to be isolated and small,” said Earl Evans Northeast Sales Rep for Van Staal and Newport-area angler, adding “but if you can get a cast in front of them they’re usually pretty receptive to lures. The earliest I’ve seen them in Newport is around August 25th.” The West Wall seems to draw in all kinds of tropical visitors each season from jacks and cobia to Spanish and king mackerel and of course, albies. If you’re fishing in the vicinity of the Harbor of Refuge in late-August, you should always have a rod rigged for speedsters. Bait is always going to play a big part in where albies might be found and Narragansett Bay is a nursery for untold numbers and species of baitfish, making any one of the passages between the bay and the ocean a magnet for false albacore and they’re great places to focus your late-summer searches.
Connecticut
For those of you hoping to score an August albie in my home state of Connecticut, you’ll be doing more wishing than catching. Capt. Mike Roy of Old Lyme Connecticut-based Reel Cast Charters said the earliest he’s seen albies inside his range was August 30 but those fish were caught at Watch Hill. Andrew Nichols owner of the Fishing Factory III echoed the same sentiments. He noted that catching a false albacore within the confines of Connecticut during the month of August is an unlikely prospect. Generally, the first push of early fish will move into Long Island Sound the second week of September or later. When asked about the most likely place to find the first little tunny in Connecticut he told me “If you’re looking to be the first one to find the fish, the best areas to look would be The Race, The Sluiceway and the area around Stonington and Mystic.”
False albacore drive a frenzy among anglers that can be almost as intense as their furious topwater feeds. The fanatical interest in their presence and whereabouts is not without reason. The foamy white water feeds punctuated by football shaped tunoids flying through the air is one of the most exciting angling experiences our region has to offer. The advent of social media and an evolving tackle industry only add fuel to the fire of a bite many can only hope will live up to hype each fall run season. Pumpkin Spice season doesn’t last forever, get yours while it’s hot.
