Posted on November 28th, 2021
I hope everyone had a nice Thanksgiving and is enjoying the Holiday weekend! It ended on a nice note with some beautiful weather today that had temps in the 50s, light winds and sunny skies. I even got a fishing report with what is the first 20 pound tautog that I’ve seen this season. Last year we had several fish over 20 pounds reported with most of them being released. Hopefully this is a good sign of winter tautog fishing to come.
Captain Chase Eberle of Chasin’ Tides Charters was the first captain to see a 20 pound tog come over the rail of his boat this season when this jumbo ate a crab on a jig. The crew also caught a 10 pounder, lost another jumbo and boxed up several other keepers.
Donnie Post and Shawn Flaherty had a nice day of fishing over the Thanksgiving Holiday when they caught a few keeper tautog and released some short rockfish in the back bay.
Captain Monty Hawkins of the Morning Star spent his Thanksgiving morning doing some terrific work for the Ocean City Reef Foundation thanks to the help of some awesome volunteers.
Reef Blocks! 11/25/21 Many Hands Make The Work Light. Great Scott! I cannot believe how many volunteers showed for our Thanksgiving morning reef block trip – 16 volunteers! Sure made light work of it. Loaded 3 pallets (or 209 exactly) of large block donated by York Building Products and eased on down to Harry Kelly’s Reef to nourish some existing bottom. Even as we were underway the dagone weatherman promised west winds. They were SSW instead. And not 10 to 15 but 22. Winds weren’t whistling as yesterday but a steady low moan in the rigging put it pretty close. Got the trip in at least. Started at eight sharp. An hour to load. Another hour running time & getting a double anchor set. Sixteen minutes to unload. Home by 11 and volunteer t-shirts for all. Pretty dern smooth. If it wasn’t Thanksgiving I’d have loaded her again. I should mention the only OCRF donation money spent here today was for trucking the block from York PA.. That’s cheap reef. Have two barges coming – headed for Jackspot. Getting them & on site ain’t cheap. Heck of a lot bigger though. Have more projects too in the pipeline. Maryland does not have a marine reef program. What y’all donate is what we have to work with. I make it stretch as far as possible. Donate at ocreefs.org for charts, hats, Ts, etc. Have a cool raffle going too. Pair of nice Benellis plus a great prize every Sunday till the main drawing New Year’s Day. Y’all have a great holiday!Monty Volunteers: Bernie Obrian, Rich Bulizak, David Mangus, Charles Steiger, Jon Nordstrom, Kelly Clark, Jamie Williamson, Katie Lauer, Capt Jeff Nottingham, Mates Vic & Brian, Colby Thiel, plus Jay Bergey & grandson James.
