We had some really nice weather in and around Ocean City today with sunny skies, comfortable temperatures and most importantly for fishermen, light winds. It was a great day to be on the water.
Captain Jason Mumford of Lucky Break Charters had a very nice morning of flounder fishing today with four nice keeper fish for the cooler and ALOT of throwbacks.
Anglers fishing with Captain Dave Caffrey of On the Run Charters had good fishing today with rockfish, a winter flounder and a couple of keepers up to a nice 22″.
Captain Tony Battista of Saltwater Adventures didn’t set the world on fire at the route 50 bridge, but he did catch nine flounder for his group including two keepers.
Captain Will with Local Hooker Charters had some fun with his group today putting them on some keeper flounder up to 22″ and some catch and release shark fishing action.
Caleb Powell and Mitchell Ferrell caught 7 keeper flounder between 18″ and 23″ on Deadly Doubles with white Gulp.
Captain Chris Mizurak of the Angler reported that sea bass fishing was tough today, but he did see some nice flounder up to just under 7 pounds.
Dan Potter fished the Jackspot where he caught some keeper sea bass including this very nice 3.8 pound knothead.
Captain Monty Hawkins of the Morning Star didn’t quite have the fishing that we did yesterday, but he still saw plenty of sea bass and a couple of weird ones.
Little trouble with reservations this morning. Fellow was put on next Sunday’s sheet – but booked today. Thank goodness I wasn’t sold out. Got everyone aboard and underway into a modestly confused and choppy sea.
Wait – What? Confused? Choppy?
Where’d that mini-mess come from?
Supposed to be near-mirror conditions.. Ah well, plenty fishable at least. (Came beautiful. By day’s end.)
Mike and Daniel deployed a pair of pyramids at Capt. Bob’s Memorial Reef and off we went.
Though somewhat successful, fishing was more of a grind today. Yesterday I didn’t see a whole lot on my screens but we caught fine. Today I didn’t see a lot electronically either – but on their hooks?
Yeah, not.
Ehhh, it was actually a pretty good day for some – very good. I was just spoiled from yesterday.
One thing yesterday and today did not offer was a jig bite. When it’s bait or bust, a jigging aficionado like Matt (who jigged up a rare summer limit not long ago) will take a bust that he might keep jigging!
Unusual, Daniel (almost using all his reef builder’s karma) split the pool with Andrew – dead even.
We had a “cottonmouth jack” from beneath a piece of debris. Was hoping for mahi today; caught that curiosity instead.
A species that truly surprised me was in the number of red hake – aka ‘ling’ as we called em years ago – we caught this day. (I reckon I’ll stick with red hake if they make a resurgence.)
These were age one fish, not the ‘arm-longers’ of yesteryear.
A few years ago local scallops (think Elephant’s Trunk) were infected by a disease first studied by Stevenson in 1936 – graying disease. I don’t pay it much attention but I suppose that shut down scallop dredging locally where the disease was. Even if scallops only live a year or two of their 12 year max? ..our red hake population’s life cycle resumes. ( https://www.sciencedirect.com/…/abs/pii/S0022201116301732 “Results from this study link an apicomplexan species, known to be highly pathogenic in scallops, to gray meat occurrence with a potentially high impact on the fishery.” And a history https://www.sciencedirect.com/…/pii/B9780444627100000109 )
Be a healthy thing to let it run.
I’ve written about the disappearance of red hake off our coast for over 30 years. Here’s a shallow dive into it from July 31st of this year.
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Missing since the mid 1990s, we saw a few ling today. Red hake/urophysis chuss/ling – whatever you want to call them – it won’t be ‘that’s a pretty fish.’
Nope, not until their fillets emerge from a fry daddy. Then?
Some good living.
Before self-enforced sea bass management took hold they used to be a huge part of our summer. We’d catch the heck out of em until the first hurricane swells in August.
Then, in 1993, NOAA closed Georges Bank to scalloping. Our red hake catch plummeted thereafter.
Whuuuut?
Whyzat?
Ahhh.. Nothing happens in a vacuum off here. According to Able & Fahey’s “First Year in the Life of Estuarine Fishes” (w/Urophysis chuss, a decidedly marine species, it was included only because they thought its early life interesting.) When red hake are spawned they soon -at just half an inch- hide in a live scallop all day & only feed at night. They’ll do that until they’re about 5 inches long.
When NOAA closed Georges Bank to scalloping, that industrial effort moved south hard. In very short order our ling fishery had a giant hole in its life cycle and the fishery went toes-up.
I hope having caught two ling inshore is a good sign. All kinds of critters eat those sorta-catfish looking red hake/ling — bluefin tuna being chief among them.
It all ties together somewhere; from oysters’ collapse in the 1970s turning the Mid-Atlantic ocean green to this day; or the astounding yet wholly unstudied loss of our nearshore 10 to 25 – even 50 fathom temperate coral hardbottoms; to an extreme pulse of overfishing causing an important prey species (and fry daddy king!) to become scarce in barely two years time..
The common thread ?
(Today’s ‘too big to fail’) ..”economically important fisheries” making the study of even long ago ecosystem impacts an unpleasant task politically.
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The ocean offers an incredible potential in fisheries restorations & improvements.
I think we’re at less than 20% of her offerings.
Would that we might focus on putting lost habitat back (even if live scallops, but especially her sea whip meadows of the 1950s, and fifty fathom bottoms lost in the 1970s..)
While habitat production isn’t all of it, there’s a giant void in spawning production where missing or quality is diminished.
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