Posted on April 9th, 2017
We had a nice weather day today with sunny skies, light winds and temps in the 50s. It was the start to what looks like a beautiful weather pattern for the next several days. My phone started ringing first thing this morning with tale of the first flounder being caught and report that several people were going to be on the water.
After news from Captain Jason Mumford of Lucky Break Charters that he was catching flounder in his crab pots for the past week or more, I was certain that the first flounder of the season would be caught soon. I was certain enough that I even gave it a shot a few days last week, but didn’t have any luck. A couple of guys that did have some luck were Lukas Layton and Jacob Sturgil. Lukas and Jacob were trolling for rockfish by the route 90 bridge in some pretty nasty weather on Friday afternoon when they were pleasantly surprised by a 20″ flounder that jumped on their white jig head tipped with a zman paddler. Congratulations guys!!
Our inshore charter fleet is geared up and ready to go now that flounder have shown up and the rockfish are snapping so well. Ocean City Guide Service, Pitboss Fishing, Lucky Break Charters, Buffalo Hunter Guide Service and Dusk to Dawn Bowfishing can all be found on our inshore charters page. FishinOC.com/inshorecharters
Speaking of rockfish and inshore charters, two of our guys were out on the bay today taking advantage of a pretty stellar rockfish bite up and down the bay. Captain John Prather of Ocean City Guide Service was out with his first charter of the season today and had some pretty good luck with the rock at the Verrazano bridge behind Assateague Island. Captain John put his charter on some good striper action with fish up to 25″.
Captain Jeff Coats of Pitboss Fishing was on the water as well today with his fiancé Karen and they had a lot of fun with the school rock as well. Captain Jeff and Karen were at the route 90 bridge where they caught the end of the flood tide and used Big Bird Cropper’s World Famous Roy Rigs to catch 25 “healthy” rockfish. The fish were all between 18″ and 22″.
Captain Luke Blume of the offshore charter boat C Boys had his little boat in the water with the kids and he had the last bridge in OC waters covered when he fished just north of the route 50. Captain Luke was trying the flounder with minnows, but his son Joshua had other ideas when he caught and released a nice 25″ fish.
The weather was just too nice to sit at the dock today so I took the family out in the Fish in OC Carolina Skiff to get in on some of this fishing action and we had a great time. We passed Nick Denny of the Morning Star in his kayak down by the Verrazano bridge where he was tearing the shorty rockfish up.
Nick pointed us in the right direction and my wife Kristen and son Ryan caught and released a half dozen rockfish in about 30 minutes on……you guessed it…..Big Bird’s World Famous Roy Rig It was Ryan’s first rockfish and was a ton of fun in the nice conditions.
I don’t know where the kid gets it, but rockfish on the bay wasn’t enough to feed his fishing hunger for the day. After we dropped Mom off we took some minnows down to our bass pond hook up where we caught some nice crappie and a couple of large mouth. It was a great day spending some time doing what I love with the people I love.
