Posted on May 22nd, 2023
Check out the new Van Staal spinning reel available at Atlantic Tackle!
The ocean boats got one last day in before the wind starts northeast and probably ruins the rest of the week. Northeast normally blows for an odd number of days so let’s hope its 1 or 3 and not 5 or 7.
Captain Victor Bunting of the Ocean Princess had to move around on today’s trip, but doing so allowed a bunch of nice sea bass to end up in coolers on his rig.
Captain Chris Mizurak of the Angler saw some decent fishing on today’s trip with some good sea bass up to more than 3 pounds.
Captain Monty Hawkins of the Morning Star had to take his trip in to overtime today, but it was worth it to put some quality fish in the boat.
A light bit of NE breeze ruffled the sea’s surface on our way off; start of a sustained NE wind I fear. Looks as though much of the coming week’s fishing will be lost to high winds and seas.
Two “just starting to season” Old Salts, Grant and Sam, from Chesapeake City dropped 20 reef blocks at Al Berger’s Reef before we shoved off a bit more. Their reef unit will be covered in our temperate corals before they get their first Varsity letters.
Lots of reef building getting ready to happen. Have 4 boats in the immediate pipeline and more (seriously more!) in negotiations. Watch for emails and posts if you’d like to help ready a reef for deployment.
My first stop today was a drift. Not many keepers, but showed promise – clients were catching. Then, just like that, increasing current and wind had us using 12 oz sinkers for the second drift.
Too fast.
I had to abandon the spot.
Turned out to be a good thing. Man was I glad to see sea bass stacked up feeding on krill at my next bit of reef.
A first for this season; maybe the bluehead boys are getting a bit more antsy – coming inshore to spawn.
Taking jigs & bait; some were nice fish.
That’s exactly what we’d want in May (and haven’t had!)
Stretched the day way into overtime to make sure everyone had a solid fish fry for the family. All but two anglers had double digits, yet no one limited. Rare that. Ms Gaye from Temple Hills, MD boxed a big knothead to pocket everyone’s money. Then she won the reef raffle too! (..might be the night to head over Ocean Downs?)
Ended up with 4/10ths of a mile of anchor line out. More than one way to build character in your crew.
Lots of NE wind coming. Don’t know if it will affect the resort town; dern sure going to affect its fishermen.
Will likely send an email/FB post looking for help to ready some boats we’re going to reef.
Won’t be light work I don’t think!
Cheers,
Monty
Big Bird Cropper and Shaun Flaherty had a real good day at the route 50 bridge today. They guys used Roy Rigs to catch a bunch of short rockfish and then used the “dredge” to catch two keeper rockfish and some big bluefish.
Reece Schindler used a Roy Rig to catch this 28.5” keeper rockfish at the route 50 bridge while fishing with Rich Daiker.
