Posted on September 2nd, 2015
Morning Star photos by Nick Denny
I had the opportunity to fish on the Morning Star with Captain Monty Hawkins out of the Ocean City Fishing Center today to shoot a new episode of our TV show Hooked on OC. The wreck and reef flounder fishing has been awesome lately and the weather forecast was for light winds and calm seas so I was eager to jump at the chance.
Captain Monty has always been very gracious for our crew and allows us an open invitation as long as he’s not full so I grabbed the camera and Hooked on OC part time cameraman Nick Denny and we headed out.
We arrived at about 6:15 as the customers were loading the boat and mates Wes and Dan were welcoming everyone on board. The fishing has been good, so folks were excited and anxious to see what today would bring. We were scheduled to leave the dock at 6:30 and left at about 6:25. If you show up after the scheduled departure time for Morning Star, you’ll end up “looking at the west end of an east bound boat”. The weather was just as predicted with a flat calm ocean so we broke the inlet and steamed to an undisclosed location ready to pull some flounder over the rail. We stopped briefly to do some good work for the Ocean City Reef Foundation as Captain Monty and crew tossed some blocks on an OCRF location to better the habitat.
(Sidenote….if you ever decide to go fishing on board the Morning Star DO NOT BRING A GPS TO GET COORDINATES! Your equipment will be float tested, and it will not float.)
It wasn’t long before fish started coming over the rail and it turned out that the first keeper to hit the deck ended up being the fish pool winner for the day. Paul Dominick from Severn, MD caught this beautiful 25″, 6 pound flattie and set the bar high for everyone else that was in the pool.
By the time Captain Monty called lines up for the end of the day there were several keeper flounder in his customer’s coolers and lots of smiling faces. I was one of them with three keepers for myself, and Nick Denny ended up with two keepers as well. There were a few limits for some folks and it was a great day on the rip!
Captain John Prather on Ocean City Guide Service had a good day in the ocean today as well. Captain John ran a three hour trip and put this happy family on some keeper flounder and a pile of croaker.
Offshore Captain Joe Drosey on board Rhonda’s Osprey out of Sunset Marina had a good day with Buddy Trala and some employees from Sunset Grille. Captain Joe put the crew on three white marlin releases.
