Holy Smokes! This steelhead bum just spent a week in Harkers Island, North Carolina fishing for albacore, and I have to say, it's an awesome fishery. Of course, I had to learn about casting on demand, as in "Cast now, now, now!Hurry, they're right there, Now!" and back casts, boat antennas, the panic of seeing busting fish hammering bait on top, strip striking, two-handed retrieves and other things a steelheader has little experience with. Needless to say I was quite amusing to my friends for the first few days. It was really cool to be on such aggressively feeding fish (especially after a month of chasing our tight-lipped Skykomish silvers), and when hooked, well, those albies are just amazingly hot. I doubt I've ever seen that much backing.
A real highlight of the trip was fishing a spot where the tide was pouring over a small sandbar and on the upstream side where it was only a couple feet deep was a huge pod of bait. The downstream edge of bait was getting sucked over the bar into a little standing wave, where they were getting ripped by food crazed albies. You could cast cross current, make a mend (ah, something I can deal with) and watch a side view of the standing wave like an aquarium as the albacore zoomed under the waking surface fly and exploded on it. Really neat. Loved that surface fishing so much I pretty much quit the clousers and other streamers just 'cause the takes on top were so explosive.
Anyway, if any of you fellow steelhead nuts ever gets the chance to check out this fishery, don't pass it up. As a dyed-in-the-wool river guy, I was a bit skeptical of this run and gun saltwater powerboat stuff, but I'm sold. It was awesome. Juro--was hoping I might run into you down there. Did you go? Anyone else, if you want any info or names, let me know. It's pretty awesome.
Peace,
Skookum
