Posted on October 15th, 2017
I just got back from passing out checks at the Ocean City Marlin Club for the first ever Ocean City Inshore Classic and I want to thank everyone that helped us put this event on in such short time. We got a lot of positive feedback this weekend and at the awards so this is something that we’re hoping will turn into an annual event. We had 16 boats enter the tournament and 43 total anglers and we handed out a little over $4,000 tonight. We also had some great trophies and some other prizes for our winners and based on what everyone said they had a great time and will be back next year.
We thought we might have a busy day at the scales being that participants were able to fish overnight into today and we were right. Scales closed at 7 PM last night so anyone that caught fish last night or today before lines out at 3 PM would weigh today from 3 PM until 5 PM. We had a red drum waiting for us at 3 o’clock and it was nonstop until about 4:15. When things slowed down we had weighed a red drum, some big sheepshead, some keeper tautog and a bunch of legal flounder. Here’s who won what.
Third place in the open category was a 4.4 pound bluefish caught by the crew of the Miller Time. Miller Time also caught a rockfish worth some dough so we’ll get back to them in a minute.
The crew of Stern Reminder weighed a nice 7.6 pound red drum that they caught today that was good for 2nd place in the open category.
First place in the open division was caught by the crew of the Reel Quick. Their 9.2 pound sheepshead was the largest open division fish of the tournament. Reel Quick had one heck of a day on the south jetty today. They also caught 1st, 2nd and 3rd place tautog at 2.8, 2.8 and 3.2 pounds and received a check for $775 tonight.
There were a bunch of flounder brought to the scales at Atlantic Tackle today and a lot of them weighed 2.4 pounds. Unfortunately 2.4 pounds wouldn’t end up on the leader board after the crew of Minor Threat weighed their stringer of six keeper flounder. The Minor Threat had an awesome day of flounder fishing and swept the flounder category with fish of 2.8, 3.0 and 4.4 pounds. Minor Threat won a nice check of $970 and a new JPR custom rod for their flounder category sweep.
The big money winners in the first annual Ocean City Inshore Classic was the crew of the Miller Time. Miller Time won third place in the open division, but their big dough came from the one and only qualifying rockfish that they weighed during yesterday’s scales action. Miller Time’s first place rockfish and third place open division bluefish earned them a nice payday of $1,927.
Congratulations to all of the winners and thank you for participating!
There was some pretty good flounder fishing outside of the tournament today in the nice clean water conditions. The Tortuga with Captain Drew Zerbe had some good keeper fish this morning and followed that trip up with five keeper flounder on this afternoon’s trip.
My good friend Jim Buck Ell took a trip to the Choptank River today with his son Darren to do some rockfishing and had an awesome day. Jim Buck and Darren combined forces with the crew to put 10 keeper rockfish in the box. 
Many thanks to all of the businesses and individuals that stepped up on short notice to make the Ocean City Inshore Classic a possibility and a success.
