The winter malaise has taken firm hold now, so much so that it has progressed to the point that we don't even notice some of the calm, sunny and particularly pretty days that punctuate the months of January and February.

You probably haven't even noticed that the days are getting longer; although it is still dark in the morning, there is daylight to considerably later than there was a month ago. That works well for angles and fishermen – you can still hit the Edge at first light; do your day's fishing and then come home in the last of the daylight.

There has been some improvement in the weather and while cold fronts and depressions will continue to sweep on through the area, there will be more predictable periods of fishable conditions that should allow piscatorial expeditions out to the Banks and elsewhere. Certainly some of the commercial operators have been taking advantage of these windows of opportunity.

Trolling has been the preferred method as of late. This is probably because it allows for a tour of the offshore grounds where concentrations of bait or schools of fish might be located. Some of these signs are highly visual, such as jumping tunas while others are much more subtle; like shadows on a depth sounder, marking bait at depth.

Older angles will remember back in the day, when early season fish generally had guts full of orangy-red crustaceans. This coincided with even the early depth sounders showing the presence of a sub-surface layer and the supposition was that the fish were spending all their time feeding at depth. In order to counter that, preferred lures, mostly "Japanese feathers" at that time, were red and white and combinations thereof.

To return to the present, there is no reason to think that the layers of plankton do not continue to occur and that, as in ages past, the fish will feed on them. In any case, the presence of bait usually ties in with the occurrence of fish and that has to be all good news.

While there is not much obvious bait activity, there is enough to keep sufficient fish around to justify the effort. Commercial boats have been scoring fairly regularly with wahoo. Catches of up to half a dozen and occasionally more have attracted commercial trollers to the Banks with Challenger seeming to be the preferred venue. If nothing else it is a little closer to home and burning the fuel while working productive bottom makes more sense than traversing the deep water with the reduced expectation of any action.

Mixed in with the wahoo are a few yellowfin tuna. These are mostly school-sized but large enough to warrant market attention at a time when they are often in short supply. Whether this is an indication of more to come is unclear but there have been winters when schools of yellowfin in the 50-80-pound range were commonly encountered especially in unlikely places like off the East End. The presence of smaller yellowfin tuna mean that overall conditions are conducive to the presence of the species so something might well develop. We shall have to wait and see.

While taking advantage of the wahoo and tuna action, commercial fisherman Michael Barnes had a nice capture recently. An albacore that weighted in at just over 50 pounds struck a down rigger while he was trolling on the Bank. A good fish on sporting tackle the tuna (it is a tuna, after all) gave a good account of itself.

A sought-after fish through much of its range, the average albacore is considerably smaller than 50 pounds. It is a species of major market value, comprising the "white meat tuna" that is found in the cans that seem to be in everyone's kitchen.

Actually, it is a bit surprising just how few albacore are caught here each year. There are probably a few that get misidentified even though the extended length of the pectoral (side) fins should be a dead giveaway. What probably makes the difference is the fact that the albacore tend to prefer cooler water and when the cooler water is predominant, angles tend to stay home.

There are two ways to get into cooler water – one is to travel north (or south for that matter) until you are seriously into a temperate zone, the other is to sink down in the water column and swim around at depth. Just a few feet below the surface the water often cools off quite markedly.

Oriental longliners that used to frequent local waters concentrated on this species and the albacore would be stacked like cordwood in the holds of any of the ships that called into a local port. They based their fishing effort on water temperature and it was only during the winter months of November through February that conditions were ideal around Bermuda. They usually only called into the Island if they had a sick or wounded seaman or if mechanical difficulties forced them to. They were mostly based in the West Indies and would fish around here and then return to their Caribbean base once the holds were full.

Funnily enough, it was probably some of those fish caught around here in the winter that graced our supermarket shelves some months later.

Basically, there is no doubt that the fish occur here in good numbers and in respectable sizes, the question is why aren't more of them caught. Deep drifting or trolling deeper should get results but the real answer is the overall lack of effort, in particular directed effort. If anyone really wanted to catch them, they would meet with success. For the time being though, the albacore get a pretty much free trip through the local area, with only incidental fish being caught. Good luck to them, as they will probably inevitable end up in a tin somewhere!

With the worst month of the winter to look forward to, fishing will probably be the last thing on most angles' minds. Does not fishing still make you an angler? Based on the fact that you do fish during the rest of the year, we will be generous and accept that you spend the off-season repairing and replacing fishing gear and getting the boat in shape. While there are probably precious few of you actually doing any of these things, there are reasons why you should. Most of us have day jobs and only have part of the weekend free to do fishing and boating-related chores. We live on an island where things can be harder to get. It can take a couple of weeks to obtain a part for a reel or motor. Put those things into context and factor in an early spring and it will seem like tomorrow but it may well be time for Tight lines!!!