Posted on November 18th, 2024
We had a nice fishable day today with sunny skies, warm temps and little wind and there were some really nice fish caught in the ocean.
Captain Monty Hawkins of the Morning Star had a tough day with the sea bass, but the other fish that came over the rail made up for it pretty good. Including a HUGE doormat flounder!
Some Sea Bass, A Serious Fluke, and a do what? Really?!? 11/18/24
Began this day with fantastic artwork off to the east. Sunup offered quite the spectacle across a broad swath of sky. Then we even had a short-lived and quite rare escort of nearshore bottlenose dolphin bow riding for a few minutes inside 3 miles.
After ambling SE a good while; and, as ever, with Joey & Jeff hopeful & running tuna lines astern, we paused a bit for Tim to send a twenty four block reef unit down to Rambler Reef before continuing on.
Clients & crew had spotted a few tuna already when Joey saw a good fish close by to port.
Derned if we didn’t get bit too.
The tuna was even gracious enough to stay on the hook while George & then Tim cranked on him.
I do not like losing a tuna loin to the gaff; have several large landing nets suitable for even a fairly decent tuna. Joey leadered the 40in/47lb bluefin into Jeff’s net and the deal was won with no lost meat..
If I’d had champagne aboard I’m quite certain my crew would’ve popped corks. With all the cheering it sounded as if they’d hit the powerball. I suppose for a sea bass/flounder trip? They had.
As for today’s advertised species?
Oyyyyy!!
Apparently we’d used a large part of today’s allotment of luck by the time we started reef fishing. Man was it a tough bite – especially owing I’d thought we could box up some flounder.
Was George, again absent his good luck pal, Tyler, who’d boxed a limit last week & got me thinking we needed to focus more on the flat ones. I even counted fluke in my normally sea bass only pool.
Some of the guys had a couple decent sea bass dinners in the box when it was George again who hooked the day’s only flat fish. At 30 inches and approximately 13.5lbs, it was the largest fluke I’ve seen aboard the Morning Star. George also got into double digits with sea bass – a true feat this day!
Though a day with a slow pick of cbass and fully two extra hours at sea, it certainly had its moments.
Cheers,
Monty
Captain Victor Bunting of the Ocean Princess is seeing some good fishing for sea bass with a few flounder mixed in when the weather cooperates. Yesterday he saw some limits of sea bass with some of the prettiest fish of the season.
Anthony Sousa from On the Run took a break from the boat and caught this nice 31” keeper rockfish on the Route 50 bridge.
