Fishing Mortgage Man

I was fishing on a weekday with Capt Ron on the Fishermen for stripers in November. As we were cutting across the channels heading for New York I started to see birds working and fish boiling. I could not understand why we were not stopping and went to talk to Ron. He indicated that they were not stripers but Albies and very difficult to catch. When we got to our spot we found birds working all over the place. The fish started to boil and I saw that these were Albies as well.

I had read about them and had a Deadly Dick in the box which I broke out. After a few casts it was "fish on". Now I found out what all the excitement was about. I had a light spinning rod and this fish went on a 150 yd run. There was no give up in that fish but he finally came to net. A second fish soon followed but after that Capt Ron was starting the engines. No one else had been able to get a bite and this was a striper trip. I was hooked, however, and started to look for a light tackle charter that would go after the Albies.

I had previous talked to Capt Steve about live lining stripers and saw that he had a picture of Albies on his Firstcastfishing.com website. After talking to Steve we decided to go out that next Monday. We ran out of Great Kills harbor and tried several areas for stripers real early. We had no luck and started searching the New York coast from Coney Island to Breezy point. After several hours we only had a medium size blue fish to show. Around 10 am as the day started to warm the birds started to work. We chased the birds but the fish were skiddish and never came to the surface. Finally we found some birds with fish on the surface under them and the game was on. I hooked up first and had a great fight. Then it was my partners turn to do battle. The Albies were a challenge to catch even though they were very active by this time. The Capt was very good about chasing the birds and fish to put us in position to hook up. The fish were moving so fast that you would only get two or three casts at them before you had to move and chase. The final tally was 13 fish. I had 7, Spence had 5, and Capt Steve had 1. We were supposed to be done at 12 but as long as the fish were there we stayed and fished. We eventually made it back at 2 pm. Steve knew that you had to take advantage of the fishing when it was there. I am now a big fan of the Albie and Capt Steve and I can't wait to get out with him again in the fall and chase the Albies.

Posted by Eric on April 23, 2008

I had been exchanging e-mails with Capt Allen of Reel Class Sport fishing from Pt Pleasant during the spring trying to pick a good time to go out with him. I got an e-mail on a Tuesday in May telling me that the striper and blue bite was on fire. I had told Allen that when there is a hot bite my schedule is flexible so I did not want to disappoint and a trip was scheduled for the next day. I also lined up two other fishing buddies, Tom & Chris, for our trip.

We cleared the Manasquan inlet at around 6am and headed north to look for the fish where they had been the day before. We stopped on some working birds several times off the beach but did not mark any fish or have any takers for our jigs. When we got up to the Shrewsbury rocks we did not find any active birds or real good readings. Capt Allen decided that we would troll some bunker spoons while we waited for a change of tide and hopefully for the fish to become active. Five minutes into the troll we heard the first cry of "fish on". It was Chris's turn on the rod and soon a nice 15lber was aboard. No sooner were the spoons back in the water than Tom was into a real solid fish. Unfortunately he came unbuttoned before reaching the boat. By this time a pod of birds had started to work about 200 yards away and we decided to break out the jigging sticks rather than keep on the troll. We got on top of some good readings and proceed to bail the bass on Ava 47s. These were all quality fish between 12 & 25lbs. The hot bite lasted for around 2 hours with all of us, including Capt Allen, having many fish. We searched for other birds and found an active group a little south. These happened to be 5-10 lb demons that were smashing top water.

As everyone that has fished with me knows, I love the top water action. We stayed on these fish until a couple of yahoos ran up on them and we lost the bite. It was time to head home but as we got to the inlet there were a ton of birds going crazy. The Capt could not pass it up and gave us one more shot. It happened that they were just small blues and hickory shad there but Allen went the extra mile. All in all it was a great day on the water with great company. I can't say enough about Capt Allen, reelclassfishing.com, and urge you to give him a try if you want a real quality fishing trip. Let him know that the "Fishing Mortgage Man" sent you.

Posted by Eric on February 15, 2008