Posted on June 9th, 2017
It was a really beautiful day in Ocean City today. This morning started out sweatshirt cool, but by the time I was on the water it was warm enough for short sleeves. The wind switched to the south southwest and was blowing pretty good, but the water behind Assateague Island was pretty clean so I and some others decided to give it a try.
As I was leaving the slip this morning and on my way to the Thorofare I got a call from Captain Jason Mumford of Lucky Break Charters with the words, “you’re heading the wrong direction.” Jason explained that he had been up by the Thorofare and the water was “terrible” so I’d probably have my best luck where he and Ocean City Guide Service were fishing behind Assateague Island. A while later Captain John Prather of Ocean City Guide service gave me a ring and said, “I just put two in the box.” And just 10 or so minutes later it was “just killed a third one.” Captain John said all the action took place in just about 30 minutes and white Gulp was the ticket.
While this was going on I caught two throwbacks…..that is all.
Captain Jason Mumford of Lucky Break Charters was the first to find the flounder this morning. Most of the fish were throwbacks, but he did manage a nice keeper and some school sized rockfish before it was all over.
Captain Jeff Coats of Pitboss Fishing was also fishing the spot behind Assateague Island today so almost all of the Fish in OC inshore bay fishing fleet was in the same place at the same time. Captain Jeff took this cool shot of our little Fish in OC flounder party.
It was a little rough in the ocean thanks to the wind, but Captain Monty Hawkins of the party boat Morning Star has got sea bass to filet. The father and son team of George and Alec Steiger had a good day today on the Morning Star. Dad’s fish won the fish pool today and the duo combined for a fat limit of sea bass.
Captain Marc Spagnola of Dusk to Dawn Bowfishing was behind Assateague Island today, but he wasn’t flounder fishing. Captain Marc was putting some shooters on some great cow nosed and southern ray bowfishing action.
The Tortuga bay fishing party boat with Captain Drew Zerbe had a keeper flounder on their afternoon trip today.
I got a Facebook submission from Matt Ellis of the Ocean City Fishing Community with a cool story about some night flounder fishing. I think Matt had some luck thanks to the bright moon last night, and it is definitely cool that he had such good luck at night.
“I ran the skiff over to the East side of the bay yesterday afternoon. The flounder action was good, but 99% of them were short. It was fun nonetheless, so when day turned to night, I didn’t want to quit. I knew the fish were there in good numbers, so I decided to perform a little experiment. We know that flounder fishing at night can be real good off the Rt 50 bridge, but those fish are shallow and the street lights give the flounder a real advantage in seeing their prey above. Last night I was fishing in about 20′ of water with no direct lighting to give the flounder a visual reference above. I kept on making the same drifts that were productive during the day and found the flounder to be just as active despite no light. They kept biting and I kept catching long after the sun went down. So either there’s so many down there that I’m bonking them on the head every drop, or they can use other senses like smell and/or vibration to hunt, or flounder can see in the dark, or all the above. More testing is needed which means I’ll be required to fish more.”
