Good Flounder Fishing and OCMC Canyon Kick Off Results
By Scott Lenox
Posted on July 5th, 2026
We had a slight reprieve from the heat today with temps just getting into the upper 80s and low 90s in and around Ocean City, and we even had a little breeze out of the south to keep things bearable. We’re looking at the possibility of some rain and thunderstorms tomorrow and then it looks to cool down a little more.
Today was the third and final day of the Ocean City Marlin Club’s Canyon Kick Off Tournament and now the results are in. Many thanks to Dave Messick of Hooked on OC for the pics throughout the weekend! If you’re interested in purchasing any pics from the event contact Dave and crew at [email protected]
There has been some very good flounder fishing over ocean structure the past few weeks and it’s gettin better all the time. Captain Kane Bounds and the crew of Fish Bound have been taking full advantage with limits on most trips with fish up to 7 pounds.
Anglers fishing with Captain Chris Mizurak of the Angler saw good fishing today with plenty of sea bass and some flounder up to 5 pounds.
Deb Sheppard used a chartreuse Deadly Double with a white Gulp to land this 18 3/4″ keeper flounder in the Thorofare on her boat 9 3/4.
Brian Will landed this 19 3/4″ flounder while fishing around Martha’s Landing this morning.
Yesterday, Captain Monty Hawkins of the Morning Star had a nice day with family and fishing
A few Fourth of July triggers & fluke with the Grands..
And a rant – 7/4/26
Departed just after sunrise with no intention of staying late for OC’s Fourth of July traffic; was just taking grandsons and family/friends for a half day trigger trip on the calmest day this year..
Cruz, Gage & Mom Ashley did the deed with the day’s block drop. It landed perfectly upon a very close to home reef where I’d intended to start fishing.
Then I got an idea.
Boy was it a bad idea.
Hindsight helps with sorting bad ideas out.
Spent the morning watching young Mr Gage (now officially the Hagerstown Fluke Slayer) doing his thing (even catching on clam – most decidedly not flounder bait; but when Lady Luck has your back? Clam will do!) Then Walter boxed one and a short came up. Thought the show had begun..
Ah, no.
While making the first long move, Walter spotted a pod of good sized bottlenose dolphin with young calves. We kept our distance and watched a while before heading to my next (not at all) hot spot.
Finally stumbled upon a few triggers when I found a new bit of hard bottom. Always an eye on the sounders; finding a new spot was never a common occurrence. They do add up though. This one had fish on it. Several times we had triggers swimming around the boat. They were so plentiful an adult could get bit (not actually hooked up, mind you, just bit!) Fishing as if in an aquarium is always cool. The boys loved it.
Best marks on my sounder all day – a school I was sure would salvage my reputation among adults present – turned into a goose egg.
Perhaps a school of small bonita? They certainly didn’t care for clam, squid, cut bait or peeler crab.
We continued the hunt.
Was truly enjoyable to have the boys out. No telling how big today’s fish will have become in tales told when they’re taking their grands fishing.
If we learn to manage fish better, they’ll have incredible fishing. Should NOAA cipher how to let sea bass do the heavy lifting – learn how to let fish make more fish – our nearshore reefs will again become enlivened.
Boy do they need management’s awakening.
Working on yet another way to show fisheries science and management the biological tripwire they blindly stumbled over 20 years ago. I’m pulling reef specific vessel trip reports (VTRs) dating back to 1997.
Take the Queen Reef, for instance. The African Queen sank in Dec, 1958 (a great tale to google!) In the mid 1980s the area around the wreck was permitted as a reef site. First a barge, the Penrod, was deployed as reef in 1987 – then the Blenny, a WWII sub, was sunk nearby in 1989.
It was on the Blenny when I first began enforcing a 9 inch size limit in 1992. By the end of that summer we’d see as many as 5 hook scars around a sea bass’s mouth.
Many other reefs and reef units had been deployed there by the time the state and feds began a 9 inch limit in 1997.
When all alone the Queen wreck yielded 3 or 4 successful sea bass trips a year.
By 1995 fishing was great – so long as you didn’t mind throwing back smalls.
In 1997 we began telling NOAA what we caught everyday in vessel trip reports (VTRs.)
By 2000 there was intense effort as half day boats had begun making what was for them a long run. There were 6/8/10 successful trips a week (vs 4 a year!)
A LOT of sea bass were being caught at the reef – and we have it in data from NOAA.
Unfortunately, the first batch of landings/release data I got was in pounds.
We tell them how many fish we caught and released—not how many pounds. They make pounds up using MRFSS/MRIP recreational catch estimates. You know, like the 170,000 sea bass caught from MD’s Shore (not boats – Shore Only!) that averaged 1.5 lbs apiece in Sept/Oct 2017.
Yeah, no. I don’t want any data tainted by their estimates.
I’ll get fish counts next week.
Still, though I’ll be far more confident with counts – here’s what our VTR data shows broken down as an average of all reporting ForHire boats annually in pounds.
In 2002 Partyboats averaged 2,750 lbs annually.
In 2008 – 256 lbs annually.
In 2017 – 57 lbs annually.
I have to jump through some hoops to get the complete picture in numbers of fish. Permission from permit holders most likely. Might take a minute.
Here’s what I promise. When the size limit became 12 inches in 2002 we broke the biological factory that was filling every reef everywhere along DelMarVa with sea bass.
NOAA’s vastly inflated recreational catch estimates have so corrupted their sea bass population estimates that NOAA now claims there are 2.3x more sea bass now–today–than in 2002.
I’m going to TRY to make them see a realistic picture using VTRs – and then use well established habitat spawning behavior science to make em fix it.
Bigger size limits would only make it worse..
We used to have reefs filling with age one sea bass between 6 & 9 inches. It’s called recruitment.
After 2003? The just slightly larger and older fish – only 3 & 4 yo – would no longer even Allow age one to cohabitate a reef.
Age one recruits, to this day, are shunned. Some, at least, are allowed in at age two.
Once we go back to an 11 inch size limit it will take about 3 years to see an explosion of sea bass.
Good Flounder Fishing and OCMC Canyon Kick Off Results
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