Posted on August 24th, 2025
It was a beautiful day on DelMarVa with mostly sunny skies, light winds and mild temperatures and there was a calm about that made it feel like fall is on the way. Now that the busy tournament season is over it’s time for charter and party boats to get back to the grind and put their clients on the fish. The marlin bite in the offshore canyons is very good right now and the bottom fishing bite for flounder and sea bass is very good too so hopefully Mother Nature cooperates over the next several weeks as we move into the shoulder season.
Tim Bieleski and Kevin Wimsatt hit some ocean structure today around the Jackspot and found some very nice sea bass to 19″. Tim reported few boats out there with a big swell left from Hurricane Erin that dissipated as the day went on.
Anglers fishing on the Miss Kathleen out of Bahia Marina had a good time today with some sea bass, some bluefish and some flounder over ocean structure.
Jason Sutton sent this photo in of John Reaser who was doubling flounder up while fishing behind Assateage Island.
Captain Monty Hawkins of the Morning Star enjoyed a nice day at sea with some flounder and sea bass for his anglers.
A fine day at sea: air temps cooler, Erin’s swell diminishing overnight & still more all the day long – nice to be out fishing.
Tyler, Ethan & Dawson gave our reef blocks a hearty shove atop a new spot at the Bass Grounds. With twenty blocks and 209 pyramids that have only soaked a month, it’s likely holding fish by now.
We paddled a right good way east from there and found 72.3 degree water.
Oof..
Was hoping Erin had pushed warmer water in – not drawn the heat off it. Had beautiful, clear, ‘clean green’ water
..but it was too cold.
Tried mahi, tried sea bass – tried mahi, tried sea bass..
After perhaps 10 tries I threw in the towel on mahi and focused on cbass. Fellows ended up OK I reckon. David had the only keeper fluke of the day. It was enough to barely edge out the largest cbass for the pool money.
Near the end of our fishing day the current did an about face. Curiously, I could see it coming – plain as a weedline in an eddy. We were laying fine on a wind/current south-set anchor when, quite suddenly, the water temp rose two degrees and the anchor line went slack as the boat was pushed into the light breeze.
Had I been tog fishing I’d have cursed the fates. But for cbass? Haul anchor and drift.
Worked.
Had tomorrow booked out for a day off.. Dang sure no ‘days off’ but way too many days at the dock. With yesterday’s sea bass bite the best this summer, I opened tomorrow (Monday 8/26/25) to a sea bass trip. “Best bite all summer” is not a terribly high bar. Most anglers (that were fishing!) Saturday limited though and that’s pretty dern good. “Limited” isn’t a word I’ve used much these last few months – promise.
Have the stern sold Monday. Rest of the boat is about wide open for my suddenly announced sea bass trip.
With Shelly & Holly aboard on a beautiful calm day?
Pressure is on!
Usually used for habitat exploration & artificial reef monitoring, I had mate/collegiate researcher, Owen, charge all the gear for our “stalk” – a scrub brush handle with all manner of go-pro style cameras, led lights and a couple lbs of lead made fast to test for ‘black water’ at the Bass Grounds.
Well, skipper? What in blazes is black water?
Thought you’d ask..
Didn’t have the phone connection aboard so we’ll have to wait for Owen to look at it to see; but black water is a modern complication in marine restoration.
Following Ches & DE Bays’ lead — at the bottom of the Mid-Atlantic’s sloughs (not shoal tops) there are areas where significant amounts of dead algae layer up. When a hearty blow passes through, dead algae is resuspended even 50+ feet off the bottom. It’s enough nowadays to block all light penetration – ergo black water.
This is owed – 100% owed – to oyster restoration taking so long to accomplish.
As oysters declined, the ocean grew greener. This is well-evidenced in the white marlin fishery.
Consider: before 1933 men didn’t want to see marlin near their surf launched boats ..but would – and this just a few miles offshore. Then the Jackspot, 20 miles southeast OC inlet, became world famous for white marlin fishing in the 1940s & 60s with sporadic instances of marlin much closer in.
By the late 1970s?
By then the oyster collapse had been pushed nearer to totality. With nutrient levels on the rise in our major estuaries, and precious few of nature’s biofilters present to clean massive estuarine outflows, algae flourished.
When bluewater species such as marlin were no longer able to sight-feed on their historical inshore grounds?
They moved further off.
And further, and further.
Today even canyon waters 55+ miles offshore are, at times, not far enough to find good water conditions. Ever faster, larger & more luxurious boats often approach, and even surpass running 100 miles in quest of billfish
..yet I have known men who had good fishing – even won a tournament in 1958 – inside 10 miles..
Some 15 years ago Maryland realized it could no longer provide enough shell for “oyster restoration” projects. Tried since at least the Civil War, I’ve never spoken to anyone who would claim to have known of a restored oyster bar or reef using only shell as a substrate.
Harvestable? (If at far lower levels than the historical oyster fishery?)
Yes.
Restored ecosystem services?
Absolutely not.
But, having run out of shell in the futile effort of re-reefing MD’s Chesapeake waters, restorationists turned to rock.
Rock works.
It doesn’t lay flat and catch silt. Rock provides vertical surfaces similar to a natural oyster bar where spat naturally attach and can grow to maturity.
Once grown to maturity, oysters spawn.
That’s a cycle that lends itself well to restoration efforts, no?
It will take fantastically many more bargeloads of rock to turn the ocean blue again, but at least the work has begun.
Cheers to a blue-again Mid-Atlantic!
Monty
