Sunday morning headed to Chas shipping channel hoping to find birds over spanish and blues working bait balls to the surface. Perfect conditions. Calm enough for a 17ft Henry O to do 30mph to the sea end of the jetties. No birds.
Hhhmmm… decided to just run out the channel a have a look.
Half way out we found the birds and the spanish. Picked up a pink ugly lure and started casting across a mele of spanish slaughtering bait at the surface. 3rd cast hooked up. Peeling line. This is no spanish. 5 minutes of fight on light tackle and we pull a false albie in. ??? Have caught hundreds of spanish and blues. A couple of kings. Never a false albie.
As we chased them the action spread out to C2 but we never got a 2nd fish.
3 questions
1 - anyone caught flase albies in chas shipping channel before?
2 - word is theyre not good to eat? And dissent on that?
3 - what do they hit? Caught one. Cast many times more and didnt get another eat. That 3lb fish on light tackle was a great fight.
Remember back a few years ago when Mary Lee ( the 3600# great white) pinged just off Morgan Island? You never know what you may catch out there or where!!
Sounds like you had a blast!
I like mud fish, so to each their own! Most people like them for shark bait or the crab pot, but I’ve had it fried after intensive trimming red meat off. Taste good to me.
Here is a good article that explains bleeding them and a really good looking recipe for preparing them.
As they say try to match the hatch.
I keep gotcha plugs and spoons in the boat. In small medium and large and different colors mostly gold and silver.
The big advantage with the gotcha plugs you can throw them a mile
Gotcha plugs and flashy spoons just like said above. You have to rip those things through the school super fast though, like as fast as you can. If throwing the flyrod, position your fly in the water and then put the rod between your knees. Then hand over hand strip that thing all the way to the boat. They can swim faster than you can retrieve it.
You can eat anything, but they aren’t considered by most people great table fare. Years ago, yellowfin tuna were all the rage and people scoffed at eating a blackfin. Now that the yellowfin are fewer and further in between, people eat the fool out of blackfin and call it a delicacy.
Its all relative. I’ve eaten it before. It’s not for me, but I’d eat it over nothing. If you bleed it at the catch, its probably much much better.
We were throwing Hopkins Spoons and something that looked just like Gatchas. I think our reels were to slow. Great for trout and have slaughtered the spanish and blues with them. But, maybe the false albies are that much faster. Will have to carry something that will move the lures faster.
And, man are those guys strong. Couple of weeks ago, caught a personal best trout that was almost exactly the same size as that FA. Trout fight was about 1 minute and he was in the net. Good eating but not great fighters. The false albie was a solid 5 minute pull with numerous runs. Got lucky and netted him on a pass by the boat. If we’d missed that chance, I think he had more fight in him. Fun to catch.
And, 'found it interesting that when the false albies were there, we got zero spanish or blues. I guess the spanish and blues qualify as bait for the FAs.
I’ve caught them all around the same bait with birds busting. Bonito, spanish, big blues, ladys. My opinion is that there’s enough buffet for all of those gamefish to eat well and to all be around the action. Don’t be surprised if there’s occasionally a king or two mixed in there. Maybe a few feet down lurking.
