Posted on January 21st, 2018
It has been far too long since I’ve done a fishing report….but this winter has been rough! Wind, rain, snow…not to mention the blizzard of 2018 where we saw almost a foot of snow in Ocean City. We are in the middle of a nice patch of weather however, and anglers have been chomping at the bit to get out and do some fishing.
When my phone buzzed just a little bit ago I figured it was a photo of some tautog or maybe some crappie, and I was super thankful that someone had finally gotten out and gotten on some report worthy fish. I was pretty dumbfounded by what I saw. Usually we are looking for the first flounder of the season sometime in March or April and usually that fish is caught in the bay as water temperatures climb to a temperature where flounder will start to feed on minnows, shiners, grass shrimp, small crabs and any other little bait they can get into their hungry mouths. Usually at this time of year flounder are WAY offshore and the only time they are caught is in squid nets dragging the bottom near the offshore canyons.
Well today my good friends found what I’m pretty sure are the earliest flounder ever caught out of Ocean City and one of them was a really nice fish. Angler Jeff Kukel caught two flounder on fish belly strips while fishing on the Double Trouble with Captain Kevin McCabe, Mike Geesaman, Ryan Cowder and Todd Martinek. The crew also caught about 25 sea bass that had to go back (closed season) and about 50 spiny dogfish. The largest of the two flounder was a nice 26″, 6.2 pound doormat. Todd Martinek reported that many of the sea bass were over 19″. The water temperature was a chilly 46.1 degrees, but I guess that’s warm enough for the first flounder of the year. Congratulations guys!!
