Posted on August 6th, 2018
I just got home from a busy day 1 at the 45th Annual White Marlin Open, but with 319 boats fishing today that’s exactly what I expected. It sounded like fishing was so so, but sea conditions were beautiful so everyone at least enjoyed their day. A bunch of fish hit the scales today and although several white marlin were boated none of them was large enough to meet the tournament minimum of 70 pounds and land on the leaderboard. However, we did see a massive 881 pound blue marlin land in first place in the category and that fish might be tough to beat. Here is what the leaderboard looks like after the first day of fishing.
Dolphin
3rd Place Bent Tent 22.5 Lbs
2nd Place Halcyon 30 Lbs
1st Place Moxie Boys 36 Lbs
Tuna
3rd Place Makai 61 Lbs
2nd Place Dialed In 69 Lbs
1st Place Brass Monkey 71 Lbs
Blue Marlin
1str Place Auspicious 881 Lbs
Captain Joe Drosey of Rhonda’s Osprey also sent a nice tuna to the scale at the White Marlin Open today, but was bumped from contention. They still had a nice fish at 54.5 pounds.
Chris and Andrew Sammond of Chester, NJ, Brian, Zach and Hadley Horensky of Jefferson Hills, PA and Jessica Norkis of Ocean City, NJ had a good day of ocean bottom fishing with Captain Monty Hawkins of the Morning Star. Hadley had the big sea bass with a 19.5″er and Jessica Norkis had the big fluke at 19.5″.
Captain Chris Mizurak of the Angler reported good bottom fishing for his crew today as well. Captain Chris saw some nice sea bass and flounder come over the rail including a couple of limits.
Brothers Roman and Leo Mastromatteo along with their mom and dad joined Maxwell Mastromatteo for his birthday aboard the Bad Influence with Captain Jeff Coats where the family had some fun releasing Atlantic sharp nose and spinner sharks just off the Ocean City beach.
Captain Marc Spagnola of Dusk to Dawn Bowfishing enjoyed some good shooting for cow nosed and southern rays today and added a couple of keeper flounder on a trip this afternoon.
Marc Turner landed a kingfish and released a small blacktip shark while fishing cut bunker in the North Ocean City surf.
14 year old Ben Reilly used a 4″ Gulp swimming mullet to land this 21 1/2″ flounder on the Potomac while fishing out of Heathsville, VA.
