Posted on July 5th, 2022
Check out the Daily Catch at the Ocean City Fishing Center!
We have some thunderstorms rolling through the area right now, but up until late this afternoon it was an absolutely beautiful day. The ocean and bay were calm, the sun was shining, there was little to no wind and there was some good fishing going on.
Boats are practicing this week for this weekend’s 35th Annual Ocean City Tuna Tournament at the Ocean City Fishing Center and thankfully there are some tunas in the area. Captain Willie Zimmerman and his crew on RoShamBo found some good ones today that included four yellowfin tuna and a nice 145 pound bigeye.
The crew of Boss Hogg out of Sunset Marina found some tunas today too and put seven nice yellowfin on the dock.
Jesse Constantino and Trevor Hardman had some good action on their Slack Tide when they landed yellowfin tuna of 34, 39, 42 and 47 pounds.
Captain Wayne Blanks of Bayside Guide Service had a nice morning trip that ended with several rockfish releases and three chopper bluefish from the route 50 bridge.
Captain Monty Hawkins of the Morning Star saw some decent fishing today and he also saw block 37,000 fall behind the boat today for the OC Reef Foundation.
Air felt heavy, like rain coming. Didn’t.
Not a drop.
Not til I was backing in the slip at least.
Winds were down too. Plenty calm. Another nice summer day really.
Tanya from Baltimore (who fishes like a boss) pushed twenty blocks and two pyramids by the rail at Al Berger’s Reef. We pressed on.
I think it fair to say we had action most of the day. Keepers, although scarcer than I’d like, were enough for dinner around the rail I believe.
Ms Holly was high hook by a long shot and a very close second in the pool. The ladies do have their luck..
Pool winner was Greg from Lewisburg, PA.
About those blocks.. I knew we were getting close. Did the math on the way out. Tanya, it turns out, pushed block number 37,000 overboard today.
Lot of block.
Getting close to 500 pyramids too.
Another beneficiary of our pyramid program, CCA Maryland is nearing 1,000 pyramids at Janes Island & Tilghman Reefs in Maryland’s lower Chesapeake. Given a spell of pretty water perhaps this fall we’ll send scuba divers down to see if those Chesapeake pyramids are gathering any oyster spat. Too small to see yet? Natural spat oysters are in abundance on older artificial reef units nearby. We’ll certainly see oysters on em by next year.
Where oysters are stars of the show in our estuaries; we now find coral colonizing our oldest blocks in the ocean.
Maryland doesn’t have a Marine Reef Program. What you see falling off the stern of my boat really is building reef—every day another small step toward coral restoration; and we’ve made fantastic catches on these hand deployed reefs too: the real work off Maryland’s coast, however, is done by the OC Reef Foundation. Early in January 2022 and again late in May, for instance, we sank two 110 ft barges. Currently we have 8 different steel boat/barge projects in consideration. Hard to say what of them will actually become reef, or if another major project will supplant all of them. The deciding factor, the limiting factor, is always funding. Since 1997 when MD dropped the state reef program in favor of oyster spat production at Horn Point, donations have been the driving force behind our marine habitat improvements. Near about all of it really.
If you’d care to pitch in with the project, please donate at ocreefs.org
We have no office rent; no one’s on salary—especially not me. Damn sure no one’s living large on reef donations. We build reef.
Glad to put your donation to work too.
Cheers
Monty
