Hit the vid for the Daily Catch at the Ocean City Fishing Center!!
We had another beautiful, unseasonably warm day today with lots of fish being caught, but the weather portion of that combo is about to take a turn. We’ve got a cool front moving through the area on Monday afternoon/evening and Tuesday temperatures will struggle to get into the 50s. That will mean limited time for the flounder in the back bay, but ocean bottom fishing should get even better and we should start to see good striper and tautog fishing inshore.
Captain Chris Mizurak of the Angler reported a tough go of it with the sea bass today, but he did have some anglers catch quite a few flounder and one very nice ocean grey trout….AKA….weakfish.
Brian Brannan and Mike Ahfeldt had a nice day of ocean bottom fishing using Deadly Tackle Deadly Doubles. The guys had three keeper flounder up to 22″ and some nice sea bass.
There were some nice keeper flounder caught on board the Miss Ocean City in today’s beautiful weather.
Dick and Alyssa Bordeaux of Roxana, DE had some success with the flounder and kingfish on Assateague Island using the Deadly Tackle 2-Hook Float Rig in pink and white.
Captain Monty Hawkins of the Morning Star had to go into overtime today, but he managed a bunch of limits of sea bass for his efforts.
All week during this beautiful shot of weather we’ve gotten away 20 or 25 minutes early. Today one knucklehead was dragging his wagon – my boat actually left 10 minutes late! Good thing mate Vic called me when he did or I’d have been later still..
Ah well, happens twice a decade or so..
Underway just before dawn with many Saturday regulars; the morning could easily have been an August departure. Clearing the inlet we found light westerlies, warm air temps and calm seas–calm save a deep long period swell from any distant nameless tropical system.
Not at all lady like when it comes to boxing future sea bass dinners, Karen volunteered for reef block duty. She sent the twenty block unit over in perfect style onto Al Berger’s Reef not 7 miles offshore. That makes 1,806 Reef Blocks there atop a sanded-in load of concrete pipe from 2015.
Reef Rescue: that’s where the block program shines. Consider much of the 300 square miles or so DE anglers call the ‘old grounds.’ All ancient river cobble near as I can tell; aside well defined ledges where erosion has cut behind a rock pile, in many parts only the very top of a piece of smooth rock will crest – be exposed. Beneath it is much more rock acting as a substrate. That inch or so of exposed rock is the hardest place for growth to attach. Major storm currents sandblast these low-lying substrates with suspended sediment and scour away any growth; but growth will return in time. Even sea whip and star coral will again flourish if time allows. (Hurricane Sandy was the last real ‘house cleaner’ we’ve had. Capt. Ricky told me ip off DE everything in 75 feet or less was blasted completely free of growth. One of our artificial reefs off MD in just 40 feet of water (Shirley Thomasson’s Memorial Reef) had been on my “Go Film It List” because divers told me it was carpeted in whip. Ahh, too late. There was but one remaining sea whip.. Natural reefs of very low substrate I checked in 100 feet and more post-Sandy, however, were only bruised – not ripped bare.)
Promise – one day we’ll regularly see excellent fishing inshore again. That goal is going take a LOT of oyster substrate in Ches & DE Bays to build the many truly robust biofilters needed to strain algae and algae feeding nutrients from bay outflows. That’s why our Mid-Atlantic ocean water has become murky green: too much algae.
Rebuilding great fishing inshore will also take managment’s recognition of spawning site fidelity and age at maturity’s effects on sea bass populations. I work on these three primary issues all the time…
That distant wind must have created enough swell to dampen today’s flounder bite. Nick a few? Yes. Even a decent catch for one dedicated angler. Still, there were excellent anglers who couldn’t make it happen. I encouraged everyone to focus on sea bass; especially when Bernie, easily among my killingest clients, crossed into double digits not 25 minutes into fishing.
Once the current got cranked up, fishing became tougher – still had a bite, but far more fussy. Even Bernie was 1:15 before catching his cbass limit. Jake beat him to the punch with a limit of fluke a few minutes sooner though!
Bite slower & slower, I figured an hour for every fifteen minutes I was late would be penance enough. The day ended well into overtime with all but three of my clients limited on sea bass plus a few fluke.
Big John won the cbass pool again; Jake the fluke pool; Karen leveraged her reef building karma into a nice limit – used running lights on the way out, and on the way home..
Looked like moonrise was about same as sunset..
Now to see what tomorrow brings. Never would have dreamed that would sell out!
Cheers
Monty
Check out the below vid for some fine party boat fishing….Subscribe!!
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