It felt more like April than it did December outside today with very warm temps in the area. Those warm temps were blown in from a stiff southwest breeze that had the ocean a little roughed up, but not rough enough where some boats couldn’t get out and catch some fish.
Captain Chase Eberle of Chasin’ Tides Charters has been double dipping on the past couple of trips putting both bluefin tuna and tautog in the fish box. Today it was a nice 66″ bluefin and a limit of tautog with the largest weighing in at 9.5 pounds.
Captain Dale Lisi of Foolish Pleasures had another good day with the bluefin tuna today putting his crew on three legal fish.
Kevin McNelis found this 65″ bluefin tuna today, his first of the year.
Liam, Noah, James and Brian caught this stud 67” bluefin today south of the Jackspot on the private boat Loaded Up.
Captain Monty Hawkins of the Morning Star didn’t have any luck with the tunas today, but he did put his folks on a boat limit of some nice sea bass.
A Boat Limit of Sea Bass and one heck of a run-off.. 12/28/24
((Have canceled Sunday/Monday for weather. Tuesday’s tuna trip has 4 spots left.
Greeted by a gorgeous sunrise and a bit more swell than anticipated, we made way to Calder’s reef where man-myth-legend his dern self, Adm. D. Cornflower, deployed a 20 block reef unit before pressing on further still.
My crew had set three tuna lines but no tuna bit on the way off. Saw some ..no bites.
Oh, we had one heck of a run-off though – Big Time. Fastest run off I ever saw including a foul hooked blue marlin. After almost getting spooled on a 50w reel loaded with approx 750 yards of braid, I backed down 1.3 miles at 5 knots to find a saddleback dolphin snagged in the tail; was thankful when the line parted.
I’ve never ever heard of such. Have seen pictures from the 1930s/40s of anglers proudly standing dockside with common dolphin – even heard a story from the 1990s of a young dolphin getting knocked senseless by a mature two-tone as it almost took a marlin bait. (All same dolphin species – different names for same.) Presumably they pass ‘do not eat’ through other, less violent means as well. We know they communicate. We know their brains are huge for their size (thought mostly for echolocation) – scientists hope to use AI to finally understand their ‘language.’
Thoughts of a giant tuna dispensed with in a most terrible fashion, we got back on course – mates forbidden to dare send another lure astern until the ride home.
A quick pass with sounding equipment on a fine piece of bottom held promise. We anchored just once.
I do luvs me some one stop shopping. Yes I do.
Bernie, as is often the case, was first over the rail with a thirty-five minute limit.
Nice.
Certainly was a fast pace of catching. All today’s anglers caught many fine doubles.
An hour and two minutes later everyone else had caught up to Bernie. We even have plenty of sea bass to ‘pay the rent’ with.. (Folks who allow us to store truckloads of reef material on their West Ocean City lot ask no money for use of their land – just fresh fish when we can spare a few. We try hard to keep them in delicious sushi grade sea bass & tuna!)
Brian won the pool hands-down with a cbass.
Now able to focus on tuna, we saw zero signs of life headed home. .
Also on the way home a VERY well-known Sea Bass (hint!) angler was seen eating a banana.
Do What???
Sure glad it didn’t affect the sea bass bite, though I expect there’s a saddleback dolphin that would like a word with him..
(Some say “bananas are bad luck on a boat going back to ancient times. Spiders they say.. What I can confirm is the terrible fate of fruit ships during the two world wars. Always the slowest ships in an armed convoy, they might fall behind – did – and become easy pickings for submarines. We have one such wreck off Ocean City – the San Gil.
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