Posted on April 27th, 2021
A light breeze out of the south this morning turned into a flat out wind out of the southwest this afternoon making the bay a little dirtier and the ocean a whole lot rougher. The southwest looks to blow for a few more days too and though it will usher in some much warmer air (highs in the 80s) its probably going to close the ocean for business. Hopefully the wind doesn’t dirty up the bay too much because flounder fishing is getting better all the time and there are plenty of rockfish around.
I got a text from Captain Chase Eberle first thing this morning that kind of set the tone for today’s fishing. Captain Chase already had a 20+ pound tautog in the boat so I got the feeling today might be kind of fishy….I was right. Captain Chase weighed the big blackfish at Sunset Marina this afternoon and got the official weight of 22.7 pounds and added his happy angler to the 20 P0und Tautog Club.
Captain Kane Bounds of the Fish Bound reported in today that the “tautog were growling” and fishing was very, very good. Captain Kane had his crew on a limit of tog by 9:30 and then proceeded to catch and release the rest of the day. The guys had three fish over 10 pounds today with the largest coming in at 12.
Captain Monty Hawkins of the Morning Star had tog chewing on his trip today too!
Morning seemed almost like summer – gorgeous to begin with then a bit of sw wind.
Even with just a handful of clients, I burnt the extra fuel to get away from the survey boat fleet. There’s three of em working within range of several of our major artificial reef sites. Just didn’t feel like a fight today I guess. Morgan Mericle of Silver Spring MD pushed 20 blocks over (pool winner too!) at a reef I’ve worked on some years; soon after we anchored up.
At the end of the day mate Brian had tagged 29, third fin ripped another dozen and a half or so and only bled & boxed one.
One!
Lots of legal fish went back. We keep this up in 15 years a lot more guys will know what it feels like to have a 20lb tog on their line.
Been fishing half the state limit – on my boat you can keep 2 tautog, only one can be a female. It’s just a boat limit. What we do.
We’ve always tried to put the girls back. Been releasing tog since the mid 1980s. Capt. Kane’s world record was caught on the second wreck I ever threw back lots of big tog on. What a blast we had back then.. Every time I get thinking that our efforts may not matter, I’ll see a slug of smalls where there hadn’t been any previously, plus all of our Reef Foundation builds become colonized by 3 or 4 years – acorns before oaks!
The 16 inch size limit, voluntary restrictions, changing the “I must limit out to have had good fishing” mindset, & building new habitat as hard as we can go: it’s working.
Lots to do. I have no doubt we’ll have left tog fishing much better than we found it. The effort is worth it.
Cheers
Monty
Back in the bay flounder fishing has been pretty good thanks to clean water conditions. Today Captain John Prather of Ocean City Guide Service had a nice day with four keepers going in the net. Fish were caught on the hot new flounder bait Otter Tails.
Captain Jason Mumford of Lucky Break Charters was also using Otter Tails on today’s trip and he put Jeff Bugman and Lori Alloco of Dalton, NY on three keeper fish.
Captain Marc Spangola of Dusk to Dawn Bowfishing had another good night of shooting last night putting his crew on some great snakehead action with a couple of bonus long nose gar.
Big Bird Cropper and Shawn were chucking Roy Rigs at the route 50 bridge and south jetty today and they had some fun catching and releasing school sized rockfish.
