Posted on September 4th, 2018
You can’t tell from the weather, but we have definitely reached the shoulder season in and around Ocean City. The kids are back at school, businesses are changing their hours of operation and there are WAY less anglers on the water. After Labor Day folks get back into their daily routine of school and work and fishing opportunities get pushed to the weekends. I’m spoiled….fishing is how I make a living and those of you that know me know that I’ll never complain about what I do and I feel blessed that I do what I love.
Speaking of doing what you love….my buddy Matt Ellis loves flounder fishing almost as much as I do and he’s really good at it. Yesterday Matt was out on the ocean and had a great day of floundering over some ocean structure. Matt has a great way of explaining his trips so I’ll let him do it himself…..for the record…..I’ve got the JPR flounder rod as well and it’s no joke!
“A friend and I rode out to an area that’s been stacked with flounder the last few trips. We found an aggressive bite again, but like so many times before, the wind against tide scenario made for less than ideal bait presentations. Trying to execute perfect drifts while playing games with biting flounder in crossed up conditions is difficult. So it wasn’t long before I pulled the plug on drifting and dropped anchor. When possible, I’d much rather flounder fish over good structure on anchor. I can move around the boat, throw to different holes and generally not have to concentrate on driving and fishing at the same time. Sometimes you have to drift to catch, but not yesterday.
We were throwing 2-3oz bucktails and ball jigs up current in 80’ of water, let it hit bottom then hyper-jig it back towards the boat. It was an effective technique producing lot’s of bites, hook ups and hanger on’er’s that would latch on and let go (over and over). Caught a fair amount of 15 inches and some bigger fish once we got the nice holes dialed in.
I’ve been using orange Gulp for awhile in the bay with good success. Little orange 3” swimming mullets on the the teaser hook caught plenty when fished at night off the 50 bridge. It’s been a go-to color when they seem finicky. However I haven’t tried the new low availability-high demand orange 6” Gulp grubs that some flounder fisherman are loosing their minds over. Paying $80 on eBay for three packs for of disposable baits is nonsense in my opinion, but…………..
I received a box in the mail from a good friend that runs a tackle outfit up north which contained three packs of “premium’ orange Gulp grubs. haha. I fished those yesterday (paired strips of fresh mahi-belly) and they worked very very well. Thanks Gulp Fairy!! (Not going be bidding on eBay for them anytime soon though).
Also, I brought two conventional jigging rods with me. A Shimano Trevala with the standard guide alignment, and a JPR Fluke Jig20 with an “acid wrap”- or spiral wrap guide alignment. They say the acid wrap is designed to mitigate the rod rolling left or right in your hands when a fish pulls hard. I tried to pay attention to see if there was a noticeable difference between the two guide configurations when fighting decent sized thumping flounder. Test results reveal that yes, it is true, I could tell a difference. I would have to hold on tighter to the Shimano to keep the rod from rolling when the fish applied pressure. That undesired rod roll action was noticeably less when fighting a fish of similar size with the acid wrap rod. I had never used an acid wrapped set-up until last year, but now I understand the physics behind the concept. Pretty cool.”
The local ocean going party boats had some good fishing by the end of the day today, but reported finicky fishing for the flatfish. Captain Monty Hawkins of the Morning Star didn’t have any limits today, but he did have several folks with three fish. Jack Allen won the pool with a 21.5 inch flounder on today’s trip. Chris Cutcher had a 30 inch monkfish today too. Also pictured are Scott Leeper of Stewartstown, PA – Dave Konick of Rock Mills, VA – Holly Diggins of Glenn Burnie, MD – Keith & Jeff Marrah of Weyers Cave, WV – and Robert Nauman of Baltimore, MD.
Captain Chris Mizurak of the Angler also reported a fussy bite for the flounder today, but they did end up with some nice fish in the boat up to 3 pounds and some good sea bass after working hard for clients. Mate Dean Lo also got a balloon capture for Blume’s Balloon Round Up.
