September 30, 2014 — Every year, the first faint hint of a cool snap kick-starts the migration of tiny bay anchovies by the billions out of the tidal creeks and back bays of the East Coast. Then, for a few weeks, the rolling sea turns into bloody mayhem as the little fish run into packs of hungry false albacore slashing through the schools of baitfish, lighting up the waves beneath Montauk Point with their glinting green flanks.
When they are on the feed moving through the balled-up and terrified bait, the sound is like the whooshing of a hundred scythes reaping through a field of grain. Add to that agitated bands of sea gulls hovering, diving and making a commotion as they jostle for the albies’ leave-behinds, and you have got a natural riot.
For local anglers, the return of the false albacore is like the beginning of spring training. But where the baseball player gets to work his way into shape with pitching that is not yet in midsummer form, the albacore angler has to face the equivalent of a 95-mile-an-hour fastball, chin high and terrifyingly inside.
On one of those bluebird days that September bestows as a late gift of summer, I made a beeline for the albies of the East End with my friend Kerry Heffernan, a Manhattan chef currently working on a project to introduce sustainable and less familiar wild fish to seafood menus.
I met Heffernan 20 years ago at a chefs’ outing on Esopus Creek in the Catskills, where I gave a fly-casting clinic. Heffernan was a newbie at that time. Since then he has surpassed my fly rod skills, adding to his mastery of conventional tackle, spear-gun fishing, surfboarding and kayaking. In short, he is a man very much at home on, in and under the water.
Capt. Paul Dixon, the dean of East End fly fishing, had called a few days previously to report that the autumn albacore scrum was on. “They’re raging,” were his words, which, calibrating for fishing guide hyperbole, meant it was probably worth our driving out and taking a shot.
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