I just got back from registration for the 38th Annual Ocean City Tuna Tournament at the Ocean City Fishing Center and the energy was electric. The boats are all registered and the money is all counted and this looks to be one for the record books. 111 boats will compete this weekend for over $1.4 Million in prize money and there are some heavy hitters in the mix. Scales action will take place at the Ocean City Fishing Center Friday and Saturday from 4 PM until 8 PM and Sunday from 4 PM until 7 PM. If you can’t get there in person you can watch us live at www.octunatournament.com/fishcam
Captain Willie Zimmerman of the RoShamBo caught a fish today that we don’t see a ton of when an angler reeled this barracuda to the gunwale. Mate Joey held the fish for a quick pic before releasing it to the sea.
Captain Dave Caffrey of On the Run had an nice day today with two trips yielding keeper flounder up to 21″ in the back bay.
Anglers fishing on board Lucky Break with Captain Jason Mumford had a good morning with two keeper flounder and several throwbacks. They also got to see an Osprey with his catch of the day.
Shawn “Nature Boy” Flaherty had a great day over on Assateague Island catching his limit of flounder and a nice trout.
Captain Monty Hawkins of the Morning Star had another fun day for his anglers today.
Well sugar snaps.. Almost 80 degree water but no mahi.
Rats!
Hoping for cleaner water soon. It was too green today.
“Huh? Too green?” some might wonder. As I’ve often written about, you can follow the decline of oysters in Ches & DE Bays by examining the history of the white marlin fishery in OCMD. Where men in surf launched boats before the inlet was cut in the August hurricane of 1933 were worried white marlin would destroy their gear while fishing just a few miles out for bluefish; then Jackspot became, quite literally, ‘the white marlin capitol of the world’ at twenty miles out in the 1950s & 60s – today it’s not unusual for marlin fishers to run 60/80–even a hundred and more miles offshore to find the best water.
It’s not marlin depletion. New records for numbers of whites caught in a day and in a year have fallen again and again in the last decade.
The reason they’re not on historical grounds is because of water quality.
And the reason water quality is an issue? A keystone species once capable of filtering the entirety of our huge estuaries was fished down mercilessly and then became susceptible to disease and predation..
Through the oyster’s decline our “deep blue sea” turned greener and greener – sometimes pea green – in a perfect storm of massively decreased filtering with an equally huge increase in nutrients. The combination allowed algae to flourish.
That’s why it’s green.
Wish I’d documented it better when a pilot stopped by to chat in the early 2000s. He’d flown most of his career from Newark, NJ to points in Florida – Orlando mostly, he’d said.
The fellow told me he had watched the ocean turn green from his cockpit windows. At first he saw blue to his east and west, with green in the distance – then blue east and green west exactly under his flight path – then green as far east as he could see toward the end of his career..
It is being repaired. After MD gave in to using rock as a substrate instead of “just shell” – oysters have been growing back wonderfully. It’s a huge project though. Will be a while to turn the ocean blue.
Could accelerate the process with concrete but many are opposed. Concrete, though it works great as a substrate, is only allowed on artificial reef sites and not on oyster restoration sites.
Reef balls made with regular cement, and miscast concrete pipe have loads of oysters growing on them – promise.
So far as I know, and I’ve dug mighty deep, NOAA does not recognize ocean water quality’s historical decline.
They don’t recognize the importance of our nearshore coral habitat nor its decline either..
At all, really.
Ahh, maybe one day.
One thing I learned fishing the tiny bit of Atlantic the Chesapeake Bay State owns: if you want something done? You gotta do it yourself.
After trying mahi at several spots I threw in the towel and went sea bassing. Dern near had a good old fashioned ling fling (good bite of red hake.) Shelly fried some red hake Sunday and it was as I remembered – fantastic. Red hake/ling will never win a beauty contest but they sure come out good in a frypan.
In 1993 Georges Bank scalloping was closed and a grand amount of scalloping effort moved south off our coast. Local effort sure made good dinners – do luvs me some scallops – but the spike in effort was not without ecological penalty.
Red hake, you see; a fish I once targeted most of the summer, spend their earliest days and months in a live scallop. Coming out to feed at night, they won’t abandon their shellfish abode until about 5.5 inches long.
What was an important partyboat fishery swiftly crashed as small red hake were unable to avoid daytime predation owing the shift south of industrial scalloping.
Yeah, NOAA doesn’t see that either..
A long known and well understood scallop contagion, the ‘graying disease,’ shut our scallop beds a few years ago. Though not even a whisper of their previous numbers, with scallops off limits for a bit we began to see red hake again. It is good to see some about.
Something else likes ling too – bluefin tuna!
My old mate Drew, long since a professional mariner in the tug industry, made a drop on a hot ling bite. Coming up the brand spanking new Penn 65 rental reel he had started peeling line big time – then began to actually smoke before the line broke.
Another big one that got away story? Yes, but fellows up north used to snell a 3/0 to a 9/0 hook and bait the smaller with clam – once bit they’d wind up slow. Bluefin knew what was for lunch..
Apologies to Hurricane Murray – buried beneath my rambling discourse is the fact that our Portly Prince of Portliness and keeper of the Confectioner’s Club’s priceless recipes; Hurricane won the pool today. (Wait, did I do that on purpose?)
Suspicious though.. Perhaps he offered Cathy a trip if she didn’t weigh hers in?
Like any good conspiracy theory, it is possible!
Pics include clouds of sea bass that bit for a while – water temp – today’s forecast – today’s actual conditions in video (video won’t load – did on personal page) – and afternoon rain on radar..
Back to sea bass and fluke tomorrow.
Cheers,
Monty