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False albacore are a late season favorite among New England fishermen. But albies are famously fickle and difficult to catch, which makes hunting them fun and landing one incredibly rewarding. You can improve your chances of catching these elusive fish by using the right tactics and techniques. Here are some tips to help you land a few albies this season.

• Find their food. False albacore are always looking for their next meal. You should be looking for their next meal, too. You’ll only find albies if you find their food, so look for areas where small baitfish are plentiful.
• Fish them at dawn or dusk. During the hours of dawn or dusk, albies move closer to the surface and feed more voraciously, making them more likely to take your lure or fly.
• Don’t get confused. Anglers will sometimes confuse feeding bluefish for hungry albies and then waste valuable fishing time chasing the wrong fish. Remember that albies make a quick, slashing attack on bait, whereas bluefish will slap the water rather than slash.
• Get the weight right. Given the well-deserved reputation of albies shying away from heavy leaders, many anglers go light. But they often use too light of a leader, which can exhaust the fish and lead to a lost or dead catch. Find the right balance.
• Be willing to change lures. Albies are fickle eaters, so a lure or fly that worked in the past might not work today. If you find the lure you’re using isn’t working, be ready to try something else.
• Go slow. There’s an idea among many albie fishermen that you must retrieve your lure or fly quickly to entice an albie. Don’t buy it. Albies, like most predators, prefer to chase injured baitfish because they are easier to catch. So a slowly-retrieved lure is more likely to be eaten.