“I’m giving you one more shot, dude, and that’s it. This is getting stupid.”

I heard my good friend, Capt. Eric Kerber, loud and clear but pretended I didn’t. He wasn’t wrong. This was both stupid and selfish. I was the only guy on the charter who cared a lick about fly-fishing. We ended up more than an hour from port off Sandy Hook, New Jersey, before finally spotting the hard tails of false albacore slicing the October chop. The schools were tight and fleeting — up for five seconds, then down for 30 before popping up 50 to 100 yards away.

The other fellas, all standing around with epoxy jigs dangling from their spinning rods, could have easily hit several of the blitzes from 70 feet, but Kerber told them to let me get my “fly-rod fish out of the way.” I needed to be within 30 feet. He’d gotten me there twice already. The first time, I stepped on my running line and threw short. The next shot landed right in the fray but didn’t connect. I’d wasted 25 minutes, and I could feel eyes burning holes in my back. It was a lot of pressure and angst over a fish that most of the country doesn’t give a hoot about.

The little tunny is a blast on light tackle and fly but scientists know very little about the species. 

From New England to North Carlina, these fish are called false albacore, albies or Fat Alberts. Farther south and into the Gulf of Mexico, they’re known as bonito or bonita, though their true name is “little tunny.” The biggest ones I ever saw were off Louisiana. Hundreds of them in the 18- to 25-pound range swarmed a chum slick of shrimp-boat trash we’d set out for yellowfin tuna. There were trophy-class blackfin tuna cutting in and out, but the bonita were so thick that it was nearly impossible to pick off the blackfins.

For someone like me, obsessed with false albies on the fly, this might seem like a dream scenario, but it was more like a nightmare. Much like bluefish and jacks, false albacore are a blast when you want them and annoying when you don’t. In the South, they’ll crash your snapper, grouper, tuna or kingfish party practically year-round.

Ranging from New England to the Gulf of Mexico, false albacore are known for their fight, not their meat.

Their presence within spitting distance of the beach from North Carolina to Massachusetts, however, is seasonal and not guaranteed. In the Northeast, water temperatures and baitfish migrations must harmonize in the fall to bring them in from offshore, where they’re abundant all summer and an identical nuisance to anyone pulling a spreader bar or working a speed jig for tuna. Find them within three miles, though, and suddenly they’re elevated to elite status by jetty jockeys and small-boat owners.

I have no problem tossing a metal lure at albies, but in my opinion, they are the ultimate inshore fly challenge. If I had to choose between casting at a boiling school of striped bass and catching 20 or chasing albies all day to catch two, I’d pick the albies every time. Where I fish in New Jersey, you can count on striper opportunities from October through December, but you never know if those hard tails will stick around for two months, two weeks or two days.

Data collected on the movements of false albacore will help protect the species for the future. To learn more about the Albie project visit saltwaterguidesassociation.com.

In the summer of 2022, the American Saltwater Guides Association kicked off The Albie Project, working with a team from the New England Aquarium and genetics researchers from Cornell University. The goal is to establish precautionary coastwide protection for a fish that science knows very little about. According to Tony Friedrich, ASGA’s policy director, in just one year of tagging, they’ve learned that release mortality is astonishingly low and, more important, that many of these fish migrate north to south, not east to west as was long believed. Of the 63 albies implanted with acoustic tags in Nantucket Sound, the team managed 59 returns, 40 percent of which pinged off the Outer Banks. Two of the 220 fish fitted with spaghetti tags in Massachusetts in October 2022 were recaptured off Jupiter, Florida, in July 2023.

“Our data proves that these fish are coastal pelagics, meaning they don’t spend a ton of time far offshore,” Friedrich says. “And our DNA study points to there being one stock of fish moving around in their range. All this information makes them the perfect candidates for management. But I also realize it’s going to be years of pushing a boulder up a hill, so we’re just going to keep the studies up and keep throwing more science at them.”

Landing a fall speedster on the fly from the rocks is never a sure thing. But when the little tunny move in, they are a blast to tangle with.

False albacore have dark, oily, bloody meat that does not draw a crowd around the table, but they do have some commercial appeal in the Southeast for food markets and bait shops. They’re not highly coveted by chefs or the average consumer, so government entities aren’t really minding the store regarding yield numbers. A paper submitted by ASGA to the South Atlantic Fishery Management Council states: “There are no known regulations in place to directly manage little tunny on the state or federal levels.” Friedrich believes this will eventually catch up to albie populations.

ASGA estimates that 500,000 recreational false albacore trips occur up and down the East Coast annually, bringing loads of tourism dollars to hot spots such as Harkers Island, Newport, Martha’s Vineyard, and Montauk. While guys like me feel watching a fly reel spin at 300 rpm is ample reason to chase them, the fight alone has never been enough for most anglers outside the Northeast and upper Mid-Atlantic.

On the third try that day with Kerber, I watched my pink Clouser disappear in a boiling silver flash. The reel was screaming before I could even let the other guys know I was finally on. The guys were razzing me, but I drowned it out, lost in the power of the 8-pound rocket. Albies might grow bigger in the Gulf, and require less fuel and effort in Florida, but I’m glad I live where albies are the speed kings of fall.