Marathon Sprinters of the Atlantic

They appear in late summer. Writhing masses of muscle, flashing silver and green, frothing the gunmetal surface as they crash bait along coastlines from Maine to New Jersey. If you’ve ever hooked a false albacore, you know. As Wilson Greene IV described in The Drake Magazine , “it is instant violence: like having your fly line wrapped around the prop of a revving outboard.” 

Then, in the late fall, they pull a Houdini, vanish into the vastness of the Atlantic. At least, that’s how it has long felt for those who chase them across the Northeast with fly rods. Of course, fish don’t just disappear. They have to go somewhere. Magic is lazy shorthand for “we haven’t bothered to figure it out.” 

A Data Poor Species

For generations, false albacore have attracted a diehard cult following along the Atlantic coast. But most anglers, if we think about albies at all, see them as entertaining bycatch. They’re kind of like sea-run cutthroat, jack crevalle, or barracuda—fun to pull on if your primary targets can’t be found or refuse to play, but not something you’d travel for or invest in. 

That take-them-or-leave-them attitude is reflected in a laissez-faire approach to stock management. There have never been any limits on albies—anywhere—for either recreational or commercial harvest. Biologists don’t know much about them, because they’ve never studied the population. The Littoral Society launched a short-lived tagging initiative more than a decade ago. The scraps of info they gathered suggested these fish live far more interesting lives than we ever imagined, but the project quickly fizzled. 

Albies are what scientists refer to as a “data-poor species.” Up until recently, just about everything we knew came from anglers, and if there’s one thing we can all agree on, it’s that anglers can rarely agree about anything. 

An Awkward Fish

People who fly fish are strange. That’s part of the reason fly anglers embrace false albacore. Albies in the Northeast are difficult to fool, even harder to land, and make terrible table fare. Who else but fly anglers would want to fish for them? 

“These are some of the finickiest fish known to man,” says Ed Kim, a scientist at the New England Aquarium who loves fishing for albies on fly. “You can make 50 casts in a row doing everything right, and they will flip you the middle fin. Just getting them to look at a fly is a huge challenge.” 

The same attributes that make albies attractive to fly anglers have contributed to their historical invisibility in fisheries research. Funds are finite, so institutions and management agencies prioritize which stocks they invest in studying. Generally, those fall into at least one of three categories: fish that are recreationally popular, fish that are commercially valuable, or fish that are essential forage for other popular species. Albies have not historically ticked any of those boxes, so they’ve never won out in the research lottery. 

False Albacore vs Bonita, a Love/Loathe Relationship

False albacore are found within a few miles of shore across the temperate zones of the Atlantic Ocean. In North America, we see them from Labrador to Florida. In Florida, albies are called “bonita,” not to be confused with bonito. (Though bonita and bonito are about the same size and look somewhat similar, they’re very different. Albies are tuna; bonito are mackerel. Remember that; we’ll come back to it later.) While albies attract fly and light-tackle attention from Maine to the Carolinas, they have never gotten much love further south. 

Albies get little love in Florida for a few reasons. First, they behave differently. Instead of regularly feeding close to shore like they do further north, where they’re accessible to surfcasters and small boats, albies in Florida spend most of their time in deep water. They’re also less discerning. 

“They get really picky up in the Northeast, which is part of what makes them fun,” explains Cody Rubner, a saltwater guide and fisheries conservation advocate who was recently named the 2025 Captains for Clean Water Steward of the Year. “You’ve got to use little two-inch flies on light leader. They’re a lot more forgiving in Florida. They eat all kinds of baits and are not at all leader shy.” 

Cody’s uniquely positioned to talk about these fish. A native of Cape Cod, he grew up chasing them. After graduating from the University of Maine with a degree in marine biology, he moved to South Florida and started High Roller Guide Service , so he’s intimately familiar with the differences in regional albie attitudes.

“Another issue they deal with down south is that they’re a victim of diversity,” says Cody. “Why would you care about albies when the six other bites you might get offshore that day could be sailfish, mahi, tuna, and snapper? [People are] looking for something for the cooler, and when a less desirable species gets in the way, you like them less.

“Up north you just have the big three: stripers, bluefish, and albies. Albies are also more accessible in the Northeast, and the surfcasting culture is bigger, which helps make them more popular.” 

Bonita are more or less always available in Florida. They don’t seasonally disappear like albies up north. Those differences in behavior have led to the assumption that we’re dealing with regionally distinct groups of fish. The albies that show up every autumn in Cape Cod can’t be the same ones always hanging around Port St Lucie, right? That belief, however, has never been challenged or verified by research.

The Birth of Cool

Partially due to declining striper and bluefish numbers, albies are fast becoming one of the most popular sport fish in the Northeast. According to a recent study from the Atlantic Saltwater Guides’ Association (ASGA), the number of annual dedicated recreational fishing trips targeting false albacore has increased from virtually zero in 1980 to between 500,000 and 1.2 million in 2024.

A million trips represent a lot of guide income, so ASGA members have a significant stake in the status of these fish. Albies are helping their businesses weather lower-than-average striper returns. While bonita down in Florida may not be as revered and respected as albies in the north, data indicate that recreational anglers in the Sunshine State still catch more of these fish than anyone else. Plenty of fly guides down there supplement their seasons by putting clients on bonita.

With increased popularity comes increased pressure, and since we have never studied, monitored, or managed these fish, we have no idea how that pressure is impacting them or how the population might respond. 

In addition to increasing recreational pressure, the commercial market for false albacore has also grown. As other, more valuable fishes become more heavily regulated and harder to find, commercial vessels take what they can. Since 1980, annual commercial harvest has doubled to around half a million pounds. Additionally, commercial fishing efforts used to be spread up and down the coast, but today almost all of that harvest comes from Florida. Last year, albies sold for about $0.50 a pound at market, winding up as bait or pet food.

Anglers in Florida are starting to raise anecdotal flags about catching fewer bonita, but the truth is, we just don’t know. “These are vastly understudied fish,” says Rubner. “It takes a lot of money to build the basic science about a population. In the past, no one has taken the initiative to learn about this stock.” 

Enter the ASGA

That’s why the ASGA started the Albie Project, the first longitudinal study to focus on false albacore. The project seeks to establish a baseline estimate of the population and understand more about their habits and movements. The ASGA hopes to build awareness of these fish and encourage thoughtful management decisions now, while the population is healthy, instead of trying to mitigate a collapse later on. 

The Albie Project is funded entirely by the local community, ASGA fundraising, and donations from fishing brands. In 2021, they approached Cornell geneticist Steve Bogdanawicz (who also happens to be an ablie-crazed fly angler) about donating his time and expertise to conduct an initial scoping project. They asked captains in New York, Massachusetts, and North Carolina to collect fin clips from albies they caught during a 72-hour window. 

“We didn’t set out to determine whether fish from NY/MA/NC were different from each other,” said Bogdanawicz. “Rather, we’re asking, “If we take a sample of albies from a pretty broad area at about the same time, how many genetic groups do we see?” Both software agree that the answer to that is one.” 

Little Energizer Bunnies

This finding challenged the conventional assumption that there are multiple distinct populations up and down the Atlantic Coast. So, in 2022, the ASGA initiated a bigger study. Partnering with researchers from the New England Aquarium, they implanted 50 acoustic telemetry tags into albies in Nantucket Sound. 

Their goal was to better understand the movements of these ephemeral fish, and it turns out albies really get around. Even during their residency in Nantucket Sound, they’re constantly on the move, doing laps between deep water and the coastline. This, of course, confirmed what anglers had long known. Albies are notorious for blowing up a bait ball on the surface and then vanishing moments later. Researchers also wanted to figure out where these fish go in winter. Do they head south along the coast or disappear into the vast Atlantic? 

The Albie Project has expanded in the past three years, and the results have shown that the albies that show up in the Northeast every fall migrate down the coast for the summer. Fish from Nantucket travel as far as Florida’s gulf coast. Not only do they travel long distances, they do so with shocking speed. The average migration time from Florida to Nantucket Sound is 44 days. The fastest recorded time is 21 days. One fish made it from North Carolina to the Keys in 23 days. That means swimming 50 miles a day for three weeks straight.

“They are pretty much the ultimate combination of sprinters and marathoners,” says Ed Kim, one of the primary researchers. “These fish can seriously do it all. They’re little energizer bunnies.” 

That speed and power are part of the reason we love fishing for albies. It also helps explain why they're so mysterious and difficult for anglers to understand. “Up in the Northeast,” says Rubner, “the inshore guys might be complaining that there aren’t any fish around while the offshore guys will be complaining that the albies are messing up their bluefin spreads. It’s the same group of fish moving back and forth between inshore and offshore, so the community gets into arguments about abundance because they’re so migratory.” 

How Big is the Population, Really?

The bigger question, however, concerns the status of the entire stock. “How big is this population, really?” asks Kim. “If you have a school of fish that can be here one day and a couple states over the next, it can look like there are two bodies of fish when in fact it’s one that’s moving really, really fast.” 

In addition to acoustic tags that register a tagged fish’s location every time it passes a receiver affixed to a Coast Guard buoy, the Albie Project supplied captains with “spaghetti” tags—long, thin, cylindrical tags printed with identification numbers and contact info that get implanted just behind the dorsal fin. Anglers who catch fish with these tags sticking out can report details about their catch to the ASGA. 

“They found that these fish have a high recapture rate,” says Rubner. “Three fish were caught and recaught within two weeks. That suggests they’re hardy, which makes them a really good candidate for successful catch-and-release fishing.” But a high recapture rate has a downside as well. “It suggests the population may be lower than expected.” 

The Rodney Dangerfield of Fish

The ASGA started submitting their findings to various fisheries management agencies (there are A LOT of them) along the Atlantic coast in 2022. It’s taken a couple years of dogged advocacy and persistence, but in March of this year the North Carolina Marine Fisheries Commission narrowly passed the nation’s first rule regulating false albacore harvest—kind of. 

The rule states that the NC Division of Marine Fisheries director can institute regulations on albie harvest if combined annual commercial and recreational landings exceed 200% of the five-year average—which has never actually happened. Were the director to trigger these regulations, they would limit commercial harvest to 3500 pounds per trip and set recreational bag limits of up to 10 fish per person and 20 fish per vessel. It’s pretty underwhelming, but it’s a start.

Here’s what the ASGA had to say after the announcement: “Using 200% of landings to trigger management is not great. That’s a pretty substantial harvest increase. That being said, we can’t look at this as a single management action. We must consider the long-term implications.”

Such rosy spins can feel Pollyannaish at best, and downright insulting to the tireless advocates at worst. But in this case, the ASGA was right. A month later, the Massachusetts Department of Marine Fisheries announced new combined limits for false albacore and Atlantic bonito. (Remember earlier, when we said the two different fish sometimes get mistaken?) These limits go farther than North Carolina’s, setting a minimum size of 16 inches and a maximum combined bag limit of five fish per person. This is a significant step toward recognizing the cultural and economic value of false albacore and hopefully putting safeguards in place to protect the population before a decline occurs. 

Can't Stop, Won't Stop

Thanks to the ASGA, its members, volunteers, and sponsors, we know a lot more about false albacore than we did just three years ago. The data and insights their work has uncovered are already shaping rule-making decisions. The bureaucratic machinery of fisheries management creeps at the speed of pancake batter, so getting anything accomplished, much less rule changes in two separate states, represents significant progress.

In order to effectively safeguard such a highly migratory population, however, other states will need to shift their thinking as well. “If we want to manage this fish,” says Kim, “it shouldn’t be just at the state level or even the regional level, but likely on the scale of the entire coast in order for there to be the most coordinated, effective management of this species as possible.”

Cody Rubner is hopeful that the rapid succession of new rules could spark wider regional momentum, especially further south where the majority of harvest is occurring. “Other states could pressure Florida to manage these fish if they can prove they’re all the same stock and impact fisheries and economies up the coast.”

Of course, it all comes down to creating a compelling narrative for why we should take steps to study and protect false albacore. Fly anglers generally don’t need convincing—they eat flies, feed shallow, pull hard, and require skill—but we’re not holding the levers of power. The growing popularity of false albacore as a recreational species helps us construct a more broadly compelling case for action.

“There's been a huge cultural shift in what it means to value a fish,” says Rubner. “Conservation is the right thing to do. Even if you just look at these fish as dollar signs, what’s the most productive way to use these fish from an economist’s perspective? If these fish aren’t good table fare, what are albies good for? For guides, it’s half their livelihood. It’s gas, food, and lodging in the local community.”

This also represents a rare example of the recreational fishing community working to influence stock management before we’re in crisis. We’ve seen generations of declining fisheries, and the Albie Project represents hope that we may be learning from past mistakes.