up this morning and out the door at 5:30 am, a late start on the road to
harkers island. decided last night i'd go just to see the "fat albert"
carnival that cape lookout has become during the annual run of the false
albacore. arrived at calico jack's around 7 am... several flyfishermen
were in the parking lot waiting for donnie to ferry them over to core
banks. tide was almost low, but i got around the hook before it had
ebbed completely. 10-15 guys standing in the shallow edge of the hook
tossing streamers and stripping hard. didn't see anyone hook-up there.
there were about 50-60 boats anchored leech-like on both sides of the
rock jetty, fishing for speckled trout. i don't have the stout
equipment for sal****er flyfishing, so i trolled some storm menhaden
lures from spinning rods, along with a spoon on a hand-line planer from
the stern. the spoon was quickly lost in a break off... not sturdy
enough and, as i feared, my method of hand-lining the planes would not
allow any give for the torpedos when they hit. i quickly abandoned the
planes and just trolled the imitation pogies. caught a nice one almost
immediately.

.... an albie on light spinning tackle fished from a small bay boat in
the ocean with the cape lookout lighthouse winking at you is sure to
make even the most devout mountain trout fisherman smile... and, it did.

picked up 3 or 4 more before the bite stopped. i watched several other
folks hook-up, including 2 with fly-guys. everyone seemed stoked.

posted an albie pic (actually a short .mov file) on abpf.

jeff