Posted on December 18th, 2017
Mother Nature has been treating us fishermen pretty nicely the past couple of days. We’ve had warm winter temps in the 50s and light winds that have allowed some of us….as in me….to pull our boats, while others have been able to get out and do some fishing. The bottom fishing in the ocean has been surprisingly good for this time of year and we’ve had some great inshore fishing that certainly seems to be running a little later than normal. We had flounder in the bay in good numbers into November and now we’ve got some nice red drum that were caught in December…..I’ll take it!
One of the more surprising things that I’ve been getting reports on is the awesome flounder fishing that continues into this month. There can be a straggler flounder around in December, but to catch them almost daily on the ocean going party boats is rare. And the catch I saw from yesterday was what I’ll categorize as “insane!” Justin Matlosz, Jeff Kukel, Mike Geesaman Jr. And Mike Geesaman Sr. fished on the 3 G’s off of Ocean City and absolutely burned the flounder up. The guys caught their limit of fish most of which were between four and seven pounds, and also added two GIANT flounder that were 10.5 pounds each. The biggest fish was a whopping 31″ long! That is some unbelievable late season flounder fishing! Pretty work guys!
Another out of the ordinary report for December came in today from my buddy and Angler of the Year Big Bird Cropper. Bird and Shawn had a great day Roy Riggin’ and caught over 40 small rockfish, which isn’t the out of the ordinary part, but they also caught five red drum. Two of the reds were keepers too at 25″. Nice work Bird and Shawn!
Captain Chris Mizurak of the party boat Angler was on the ocean again today taking advantage of the calm conditions. Captain Chris had another good day of bottom fishing with plenty of sea bass and some full coolers.
The ocean has been so flat the past few days that it has allowed some local Ocean City guys to make the long run to the coast of New Jersey where the rockfish (stripers up there) have been hanging out. Skip Courtney took the haul this weekend and was rewarded with some good fishing and some big fish. Skip and his crew fished between Ocean City, NJ and Avalon, NJ and kept four fish of 34, 35, 36 and 45″.
Kyle Breitzke fished this weekend at the Marine Electric and had some good luck. Kyle and crew caught about two dozen keeper sea bass and some nice bluefish including this big 14 pounder.
If you’re doing any traveling to Florida over the Holiday season and you want to get on some fish you have to check out Captain Joe Drosey of Rhonda’s Osprey who has the boat down in Singer Island, FL. Captain Joe is having a great season so far with sailfish, cobia and king mackerel. Today Nancy Kohl fished all by her lonesome and caught and released nine sailfish. Joe said she did an outstanding job in filling the rigger by herself.
