Two takes that stick out in my head both involve albacore.
Number one was the first albacore I got on a popper. Several guys on this forum were present on that amazing day.
Flat blue water, blue skies, and absolutely wide open albacore fishing. The guys in the stern were hooking albacore about as quickly as they could get their flies in the water. It occurred to me that this was the perfect time to pull out the rod I had with a floater and a slider pattern and try to achieve my goal of getting one on top.
I ran to the bow and made about 8 or 9 casts. Each cast I had a fish either chase and reject the fly, or on two or three casts I had a fish blow up on in and in my excitement I pulled the fly away before hookup.
Fishing topwater for albacore is different than any other topwater stuff I've done. Albacore don't follow the fly from a distance. You don't see a v wake tracking the fly. They come up from below, and they come at 30+ mph. On that clear day I could see well into the water from my raised vantage point on the bow. I would be stripping along, staring into what appeared to be empty water, when suddenly out of the depths would come a streak as a fish would haul ass right up to the fly and turn at the last second, or as mentioned two or three times they actually tried to eat it. It happens so fast. It's exciting ad all hell and I was kinda losing it with excitement with each cast.
On my previous cast, just as I was about to pick up and re cast, a fish shot up and blew up on my fly but I was too twitchy and pulled the fly away. I recast, and as I was stripping kept saying to myself "don't lift the rod. Don't lift the rod". Halfway thru my retrieve it happened, another fish appeared out of nowhere, moving at mach 3. It shot straight up and came completley out of the water, where I could see my fly in its mouth.
It hit the water head first, and I just help my rod tip low until I watched the floating fly line curve around, straighten out, and I came tight to the fish. At that point I basically lost my mind, screaming with excitement. That fish turned out to be a donkey. At the time the biggest I had landed on a fly rod. It was, without question, the single most memorable fish Ive ever caught.
The second take wasn't as exciting but is memorable because of how unique it was.
Again I was on the bow, casting a fast sinking line during some fast paced fishing. The folks on the stern were fishing live anchovies and keeping my deckhand busy as all hell with how quickly they were putting fish to the boat. We were nearly plugged up so I headed to the bow to play.
On maybe my 3rd cast, as the fly was coming up towards the boat, I watched an albacore appear at high speed, swim right up to the fly then turn at the same speed and head elsewhere. Rejected.
I had maybe 6' of fly line and the 6' leader out of the rod tip, just enough that with the fly rod pointed at the water the fly was maybe 5' under the surface as I was about to pick it up to recast. The fly was just sitting there and as began to move the rod to recast another albacore shot out of the depths, headed at high speed to my fly. I had no more fly line left to strip in, so with no other choice I did what I've done with coho so often and just pointed my rod down and held the fly in the water as the fish came flying in.
At this point I was fully anticipating another last second rejection but instead this fish did something I'd never seen an albacore do before. It came to a full stop. Rather than zip in and reject at the last second, I watched this fish just slam on the brakes. It came to pretty much a full stop right in front of my hanging fly. I honestly didn't know they could brake like that. Albacore have to swim forward to breathe. Slowing down their forward momentum is just something I've never witnessed, but this one did it. It stopped right in front of my fly as if it was inspecting the quality of my tie. It stared at my fly for what seemed like an eternity but what was likely a second, maybe two tops. I held the fly there, fly line in my left hand ready to strip set in the unlikely event that the fish ate the basically motionless fly.
The fish moved its head left, then right which kinda put the fish between me and fly so I couldn't really see what it was doing, but I watched its mouth open slightly and it moved forward just a bit, so I took a short, slow strip on the fly line as the fish started swimming away and down, and suddenly I was tight. Then the fish went back to being a normal albacore and started swimming down at a high rate of speed. I had a ton of loose line to deal with since this fish ate at the very end of my retrieve but somehow I was able to get it on the reel without snagging anything with loose line. A few minutes later that fish joined its brothers and sisters in an ice bath on my boat.
I'll never forget how that one went down. Watching that fish come to a full stop, inspect my fly, then ever so gently eat it is an image that is just burned into my brain.
.jpg)
), but it was a pretty memorable take.
