Posted on September 30th, 2026
It was another absolutely beautiful day to be on the water today and the ocean going boats had a great time of it with some “drop and reel” sea bass fishing for some.
Captain Tony Battista of Saltwater Adventures had a great day on the drink today with some very nice black sea bass for his crew. Most of the fish were caught on jigs on a flat calm ocean.
Captain Chris Mizurak of the Angler reported good fishing on today’s trip with plenty of sea bass and some flounder around the rail.
Captain Monty Hawkins of the Morning Star had a nice trip on the rip today with some folks limiting out on sea bass
Twelve days since I was fishing last. This day incredibly opposite those many days of storm in the flattest of calm seas.
Kim and Corey gave today’s reef unit the ol’heave ho – bullseye. Been a while since I dropped blocks on that spot. Looks like many units stacking up–just what I want there.
From the reef deployment I headed east at $6.51 a gallon speed..
Dang.
Kadin ran a trolling line astern but no joy. Sea bass, however, were quite ready for a clam & squid buffet. Bit of pointy steel in there for some I suppose; but, despite good catches of keepers around the rail – even some limits*, most went back.
Tim boxed the pool winner; and, judging by the sound of it, I think Corey caught the most doubles..
(*7 folks in two coolers..)
Among those many throwbacks–always at the core of fishing’s future–we only saw two sea bass under 9 inches today.
Barely. (I’m not to certain of that. My mate said he’d taken a pic, but alas, there wasn’t one..)
In 1998 we saw 7,947 under nine inch sea bass in a week.
One week.
I doubt I’ve seen that in the last two decades.
Going to write about that again in my next fish report. It’s really important scientists & managers get a sense of why that’s crucial information.
Back then we took sea bass from the abject depths of true overfishing in the pre-regulatory era ((I boat regulated in 1992 – state/feds in 1997)) – By 2001 we’d made their numbers better than they had been since the mid-1970s off MD; maybe since the 1960s.
It was a lot of fish.
Just a small size limit of 9/10/11 inches; no bag limit; no closed months: they flourished
..but we did have to contend with lots of tiny fellows – really tiny. They were age one sea bass. “Acorns before oaks” I often say. And, for 23 years now, those age one fish have been largely missing.
Skajillions of tiny age-zero juveniles in all our estuaries?
Yes.
But we don’t see em again till age two on our marine reefs.
I have lots of work on it. Will try to sum it up so anyone can understand the need to lower the size limit.
It’s about making room on nearshore reefs so age one can ‘recruit’ to the fishery..
Cheers,
Monty
