Posted on June 8th, 2022
Check out the first Daily Catch at the Ocean City Fishing Center!
Got some weather coming tomorrow before it straightens out again pretty nice for the weekend. Today it was nice out there and there was some good bottom fishing in the ocean.
Captain Chris Mizurak of the Angler reported a little bit of a picky sea bass bite with some nice flounders mixed in on today’s trip. Tim took the lead in the Angler’s season long pool with a 4.7 pound flattie.
Captain Victor Bunting of the Ocean Princess has reported some finicky fishing the past few days, but he’s still been able to put folks on some good sea bass over that time.
Captain Monty Hawkins of the Morning Star had a decent day of fishing today with sea bass fishing better than yesterday and a few flounder mixed in.
Imagine a ride slightly more gentle than the heavy wash cycle in a washing machine. Yeah, that’s about what it was like. With two different sets of storm swells underlying a much smaller wind chop–what mariners would call confused seas: that’s what we had as we cleared the inlet and headed on off.
Thankfully conditions moderated early in our fishing day. After a while the sun cut through; came a nice day.
Sea bass, wholly unlike yesterday, bit great where we were. This while shearwaters’ hunger seemed only slightly abated. Even heard a story on VHF today of a wounded shearwater being tossed back yesterday. ‘Nature red in tooth and claw’ and here birds seemingly crossbred with piranha; other shearwaters made a feast of it.
That’s some James Bond business right there..
Fishing was much better than yesterday. After Rebecca sent today’s reef blocks to their permanent home we paddled a bit deeper. Jigmaster Tom was high hook with 14 keepers. He also took the pool with a truly fine example of what our sea bass could grow to if management used tools at hand rather than guidance from catch statistics no one believes..
The Massachusetts guys have been giving me some great feedback on boat counts. We lost three weeks of season and had a half inch size limit increase this year. As in every single time after 2003, we owe stricter regs to blowout over-estimated Private Boat catch. Most egregious of last year’s super crop was 2.5 million pounds of sea bass caught during 6 weeks in Massachusetts’ spring season.
As ever, management used the estimates as though real ..even though no one believed.
What a farce.
It’s unbelievable how far wrong 2.5 million is.
In my work this winter using my own ‘percentage of the catch’ estimates – I thought MRIP’s 2.5m lb harvest was 2.28 million pounds too high.
Now I have a boat count to work with too. MRIP’s numbers stink. I’m getting traction with my proofs.
Biggest part of the problem? By inflating Private Boat catch, the sea bass population in Massachusetts is made to seem incredibly larger than it is. From population estimates based on pure silliness(MRIP)- quotas are devised.
It’s not going to end well.
World Oceans Day eh? Good thing I built some reef to celebrate.
With recreational catch estimates as simple as counting/estimating Private Boats, plus growing new oyster & temperate coral reefs as simple as rolling rocks off a barge, you wouldn’t think restorations very difficult.
NOAA has resisted every effort to make recreational catch estimates better. In fact, they’ve become worse and worse every time we’ve forced their examination.
And coral? Off DelMarVa?
Nawwww..
Cheers
Monty
Hit the vid for our Back Deck Fishing Report with the first white marlin of the OCMD season!
