Posted on April 4th, 2019
It was a beautiful day in Ocean City today with sunny skies, warm temperatures and light winds out of the east….and it was an exciting, awesome day for the Fish in OC crew!! After an April Fool’s joke the other day where I mentioned the first flounder of Ocean City had been caught when it had not….well now it has!
I had the Fish in OC skiff pulled out of the water today for some waxing and bottom painting, but they couldn’t get to it until this afternoon which left a little window for my wife Kristen and I to try the new Fish in OC Deadly Double rigs in search of the first flounder to be caught out of Ocean City this year.
The plan was to fish the Thorofare since the first fish of the year has been caught there the past few years, but when I left the dock where I keep the boat behind Assateague Island and noticed how clean the water was those plans changed. I gave Kristen a call and told her to meet me at the slip and we would fish the south bay for an hour and a half or so before we had to get the boat to Sunset to be taken out of the water.
Conditions were pretty ideal as far as water clarity goes….we could see our baits in 6-8 feet of water…..but it was a chilly 48 degrees on the top of the high tide. We had a little time to kill, Captain Jason Mumford reported 54 degree water in the same spots over the weekend so it was worth the shot.
1/2 hour into the trip on our second drift Kristen gets a bite, sets the hook and moments later I net the first keeper flounder of the season for her. The fish was caught on our Dale Timmon’s Deadly Double in chartreuse with a pearl white 4″ Gulp swimming mullet in 6′-8′ of water behind Assateague and was a little over 16 3/4″.
I mentioned in last night’s flounder video that I like to use pink in the spring because of the grass shrimp that are coming out of the marshes and although my pink didn’t produce any bites on today’s short trip, Kristen’s fish spit up several grass shrimp onto the deck.
We were also pleasantly surprised by a FB message from Finn McCabe of the newly formed Atlantic Coast Sportfishing Association that Kristen’s catch will be winning a $100 cash prize (which she’ll be donating to the Kid’s Wish-A-Fish Foundation), a gift card to Fish in OC restaurant partner Harborside Bar and Grill (which she’ll be using to feed me because I love Harborside) and some swag that was all put together by the ACSA. Thank you guys!!
Congratulations to Kristen on her catch and for showing me up once again like she did with her gigantic mahi from our trip to Costa Rica.
