Posted on November 7th, 2024
Captain Monty Hawkins of the Morning Star had a nice day of sea bass fishing on the rip today with several scup, or porgy, coming over the rail as well.
Save sunrise dampened by heavy cloud cover, it was just as nice a day off there as you could ever ask.
After paddling off a good way, Peter & Chris were our guest reef builders today. They dropped blocks on another experimental reef where, despite very little structure, I marked the heck out of sea bass. (Hope we didn’t squish any..)
From there we carried onward. Came through a widely disbursed fleet of 26 boats tuna fishing.
Have been telling guys about those tuna since 1991 at least. Fellows had themselves convinced they just don’t bite.. And, maybe they don’t when just pushing through. Sure is a lot of energy being burnt not to need replenishing. Boys are dern sure nicking a few now. Pretty ones too sometimes.
We found sea bass more cooperative than usual of late. George (who usually has his young sidekick, Tyler, with him) was limited on sea bass at 11:50. My long time friend, Wayne – who so appreciates the cancer medicine ‘Keytruda’ for extending his life after being told he had scant months to live & is now beyond quadruple that and fishing hard; Wayne was first into double digits. Nearly everyone crossed that mark as well.
Sandra, half of Chincoteauge’s dynamic duo of serious lady anglers, boxed today’s pool winner.
I suppose the real story today was scup/porgy. Into the late 1960s scup likely represented over half of Ocean City, MD’s recreational bottom fish landings. After decades of absence, nowadays we generally see them in early winter. This year? Derned if we didn’t start seeing scup a few weeks ago. I think today I could have fairly well hammered them with scup rigs. Must have been terrible weather up north to have driven them south so soon. (Same reason bft are hanging around?) High hook on scup was Bo with six good fish.
I fired off a few letters to NOAA today. Will include one below. Was something to do while tending the helm to keep clients over fish on a gorgeous day..
Cheers,
Monty
Captain Chris Mizurak of the Angler had a good day on the rip today as well with several nice sea bass going home with his clients.
Big Bird Cropper and Corey had a banner day on the bay today with a back bay grand slam that consisted of keeper tautog, bluefish and a rockfish.
Ryan Ellerman of R.E. Real Estate Appraisal had a nice evening with the tautog where he released several fish and put this 17.5″ keeper in the cooler.
Nice day of sea bass fishing a while back….check it out!!
