North Carolina False Albacore With Buzz Bryson

Buzz Bryson has — frequently — been titled “the nicest man in fly fishing,” and you’ll know why after hearing this interview. As a current contributor and the author of Fly Rod and Reel magazine’s former long-running “Ask Professor Buzz” column, Buzz has had the opportunity to fish with some of fly fishing’s greats, and in some of fly fishing’s great places. In this interview he takes us to the Outer Banks of North Carolina with stories of one of the sport’s most notorious tackle-busters: the false albacore.

Podcast Excerpt: “I switch to a 10-weight when they get bigger than 12 pounds. What they do when you hook them is, like all tuna, they will go down and away, but mostly down. They never jump. I mean in all the years I have been doing this I may have seen one jump. But the difference between them and tarpon is that you are fighting more vertically, and with a tarpon you are fighting more horizontally and can apply much better pressure. And when you get albacore in close to the boat they will typically circle right under the boat, and it’s just a terrible situation for maintaining pressure on them. But they are so fast. If it is quiet, you can literally hear the sizzle of the line cutting through the water over the sound of the drag.”