Posted on August 30th, 2023
I got a nice report from Big Bird Cropper showing a sample of what fall fishing could be like this year if Motger Nature cooperates. Bird and Shaun had a great day fishing the OC inlet with seven rockfish, one nice bluefish and five grey trout (weakfish)!
Captain Monty Hawkins of the Morning Star didn’t have much luck with the bottom critters today, but he did have a boat limit of mahi.
Weatherman usually has a harder time with our forecasts when there’s a tropical system about.
Hooray – we currently have two hurricanes altering the usual flow of our highs & lows.
Sea heights today were predicted at 4.5 ft; a glorious short swell with a long period of 12 seconds between peaks. Wind speed was said to be under ten knots most all day.
Just fabulous.
In fact, I thought it would be exactly the sort of day sea bass would put the feed bag on – load up in the calm before the storm and give us a great day’s fishing.
So yeah, that didn’t happen.
None of it.
Not with sea bass.
Fluke either.
And Calm? Saw lots of 8 ft swells, 9s & an occasional 10 – one 12 footer. They were indeed long period, but dang; there was plenty of energy going deep to stir up all the dead algae off the bottom. Wind speed from the SW was generally under 15 – enough to rock the boat (baby.)
After Kim from NY dropped twenty blocks we motored on off to some good reef bottom I know. There I found some of the loudest crickets you ever heard. “Marking cbass twenty feet thick now – in they go!”
And crickets.
Three stops. One keeper sea bass & no throwbacks.
No other bites.
Great Scott.
Made a long move to get deeper – hoping to evade swell’s disruption. Thought I’d try the mahi before I got there.
Jermain took the pool. Joey was first to limit; then Dr. C boxed out. At 12:35 crew informed me we only needed a few more for a boat limit.
Just after one pm we had our first full limit on anything this year.. Despite some very fine days, I’ve not had a boat limit of sea bass in 2023..
Mahi Mayhem it was.
Lots of fun.
Cheers,
Monty
