Posted on June 30th, 2020
Are you fishing the Ocean City Tuna Tournament??? Video update above.
We’re getting pretty spoiled lately with the beautiful weather, but I don’t know of any fishermen that are complaining. Today was another beautiful day with sunny skies, warm temps and relatively light winds and thanks to fewer boats in the canyons the tuna fishing was pretty good for some.
The folks over at Sunset Marina put it perfectly in a Facebook post today when they called today Tuna Tuesday. They had several boats come back to the marina with reely good catches of tuna and the fish cleaning station was busy for a while. Captain Corey Kennington of the Boss Hogg was one of those boats and they had 11 yellowfin for the fish cleaners.
Captain Andrew Dotterweich and the crew of Fish On had a nice day today that ended with a blue marlin release and two yellowfin.
Captain Mike Burt and mate David Burt put their crew on a beautiful day on the rip today when they released a white marlin and added four yellowfin tuna.
The private boat Bar South had a tremendous day of tuna fishing the offshore canyons today when they put 10 nice yellowfin in the box.
The crew of Fin Chaser out of the Talbot Street Pier got jumped by six yellowfin tuna first thing in the morning and managed to get three of them in the cooler.
Captain Franky Pettolina had an inshore trip that was lots of fun for his anglers thanks to some catch and release shark fishing and some Spanish mackerel and bluefish.
Chasin’ Tides Charters with Captain Chase Eberle and the guys has been having some great fishing the last few trips. Captain Chase reported some nighttime shark fishing releases and some daytime flounder, Spanish mackerel and the season’s first king mackerel.
Sea bass were little pickier than they have been lately, but Captain Chris Mizurak was still able to put his anglers on some nice big knotheads.
Captain Victor Bunting of the Ocean Princess reports still decent sea bass fishing with some nice fish coming on board.
Captain Monty Hawkins of the Morning Star saw a “pretty day with some pretty fish” today.
A light NE wind, a dry wind, greeted us at the inlet this day. I often think of dry NE as a ‘tuna wind’. (A ‘wet NE’ is a storm!) From chatter on the radio it was just that.
Mackerel, (Atlantic or “Boston Mackerel”) a far smaller member of the tunas or scombridea, used to bite best in NE wind too—even if a storm wind. Unfortunately they were wiped out in one heavy pulse of trawl effort in 1991 or 1992 when foreign processor ships came and bought mackerel from US trawlers in March & April. Given the blessing of US Fisheries & Dept of State, they absolutely demolished a multigenerational spring fishery with the last of our “underutilized species” program.
We carried clients a couple more years—fewer and fewer, but it was dead. The southern stock has never rebounded.
So, with this gorgeous last day of June we dropped 30 blocks plus a reef pyramid; then fished hard to get some clients into double digits—one fellow at 14—& dinners around the rail.
In all? Pretty day with some pretty fish.
David Sin of Fairfax VA took everyone’s pool money today with a nice cbass. Rick Quigley from Holland Point shows what’s for dinner – Brian Billups of White Plains MD caught some good’uns as did Brian Summers – John Griffin of Pine Bush NY has second place (& no money!)
The Miss Ocean City with Captain Anton and mate Joe had a very good day of floundering today with lots of fish for their anglers.
Captain Marc Spagnola of Dusk to Dawn Bowfishing is back in zombie mode with trips both day and night. It’s well worth the effort as he’s putting his shooters on good action for snakeheads, gar, houndfish, cow nosed rays and southern rays.
I had an awesome morning over on the Chesapeake Bay with my new friend Danny Winn and my old friend Big Bird Cropper. We fished Tangier Sound with artificial baits and boxed a four man limit of rockfish up to 25″ (Chesapeake size limit 19″) and we also had seven speckled trout up to 21″. Danny put me on my first ever keeper sized “speck” and it was an absolute blast. Big Bird’s World Famous Roy Rig was on blistering fire and Bird tells me I should have some soon to get into the FishinOC online store. Andrew Mercier was along to film so this should be a great upcoming episode of Hooked on OC!
Ryan Cowder used the Fish in OC Deadly Double in chartreuse baited with a salmon red Gulp to land this 17″ keeper flounder.