Beginning of Some Great Fall Fishing

Posted on September 20th, 2023

Hit the vid to see Captain Andrew from Fish On break down the awesome marlin fishing still going on!

It was a beautiful day today and tomorrow looks like more of the same.  This weekend??  Not so much.  Tomorrow is calling for light winds, sunny skies and warm temps again, but starting Friday things change for much, much worse.  The forecast for this weekend shows 25-35 knot winds with gusts to 40 in some areas combined with rain and possible thunderstorms.  Gonna be a good weekend for movies and football.

Kristen and I hit the bay this afternoon with some live bunker and had a really fun trip.  We released several short flounder and I lucked into a fat 22″ fish that weighed just over 4 pounds.  Live bunker on the Deadly Tackle live bait rig did the trick in front of Martha’s Landing.

When we were finishing up we ran by Big Bird Cropper and Shaun Flaherty and they were having one heck of an afternoon.  The guys combined for a limit of big bluefish, a keeper rockfish and some flounder up to as big as 23″.

Captain Joe Drosey on Rhonda’s Osprey had a great day offshore with his crew putting them on four white marlin releases and a limit of mahi.

Captain Chris Mizurak of the Angler reported flat calm conditions and good sea bass fishing on today’s trip with a couple of flounder mixed in.

Anglers fishing on Captain Monty’s Morning Star were treated to a true 1/2 day trip that left at 6 AM and returned at 6 PM.  There wasn’t any complaining though thanks to nice fish in the box.

Menhaden didn’t even have management at all until recently. (Some political clout right there! And, bear in mind I’ve been at this a while so ‘recently’ might be 15 years or more!) Promise – those fellows have been trying to catch the last menhaden for a very long time. Shifting as much of the catch out of the estuaries as possible and putting heat on mature menhaden at sea will likely make this robust fishery more stable while bolstering an important food source for so many critters in the bays..

I’ve got my multi-decade battles to fight and haven’t studied this one in depth. Sure are a lot of guys who have though. They’re winning bit by bit..

Sharon and Bryan sent today’s reef blocks into the deep. Probably squished some sea bass too if they weren’t paying attention from above. We were underway again almost immediately.

As if thrown by a champion stone skipper using the perfect rock on a glass calm pond this glorious morning, I watched a houndfish leap away from my stb bow, bounding as a gazelle with a lion hard astern might. Twenty leaps? Thirty? It’s always a sight – always.

I remember hooking a huge houndfish in the early 1990s on a kastmaster spoon with a light spinner on the stern of the OC Princess at the Queen wreck. Fish spent more time in the air than in the water. What an acrobat.

When I remember a single fish from decades ago, it was a good one. Got away boatside too. Fine by me..

After yesterdays mahi bite I thought sure today’s clients would have their ‘houndfish’ trip – one for the decades.

Yeah No.

Sure wasn’t bad. Just not what I’d hoped. Certainly sent em all home with dinner and memories of a near perfect weather day with brief moments of min-mahi mayhem plus some fine sea bass.. Jigmaster Tom was high hook on mahi with 5 – most everyone had a solid fish fry’s worth of cbass.

Calm before the storm kind of calm today. It was so nice, come time to head for the barn – I couldn’t. Mirror calm, current picking up – bite improving, I made it a halfday trip. Six am to six pm..

Tomorrow will be the last mahi trip. Next year we’ll do it again.

Maybe much sooner if the boys and I go on off during the sea bass closure – Won’t be a for-profit trip; be a mahi and tile day off..

Cheers,

Monty

Miss Georgia Touloumes is still at it at over 90 years old!  Fishing the Fenwick Ditch today she caught this nice 17″ black drum and weighed it in at Fenwick Tackle.

Check out how we live bait for bigger flounder….Subscribe!!