Posted on January 15th, 2020
Had a nice weather window today with mild winter temps, mostly sunny skies and light winds making it a great day to get out on the rip. The wind will blow a “gale” tomorrow so the ocean is out for a day or so, but hopefully she calms down quick because tog fishing is pretty darn good.
Captain Monty Hawkins of the Morning Star had a terrific day out there today doing great work for the Ocean City Reef Foundation and putting his clients on some jumbo tautog.
A fine and foggy morning. Dropped 24 blocks plus a pyramid, then pressed on for a while.
First drop JoJo from Brooklyn & Joe Mole‘ from Long Island are bowed up right out of the gate. Several others soon follow. Seriously nice fish are being tagged. Others tog are too far gone to make a good release – a few fish we would have tagged are being sent home as dinner.
Garrett Weir of Brooklyn NY is absolutely on fire. By 9:30 he’d already boated five double-digit fish with three over 17 pounds. How far over? I’ll update with good scale weights at the dock.
Nice enough day if foggy. Wind picks up 17 knots north. Fog breaks – wind falls back under 10. Day comes as pretty as you could hope in mid-January.
Despite being my best day of 2020 thus far, I had some incredibly good anglers goose-egg.
Garrett held the lead, took the pool with a 28.5 inch male/18.7 lbs.
Bill Keefer of Grumpytown PA (just down Rt 4 from Funkytown) ..Bill boated a dern fine tog for winter chowder.
Casper Pierdomenico of Delaware County PA kept some good fish. (Orange bibs/wool cap)
Joe Mole’ from Long Island did more than his share of science today – tagged some nice females.
Also in the group snap is Bill DaCosta from Long Island who let a few go too.
Captain Kane Bounds of the Fish Bound had a good day of toggin’ today too, though he had to work for it. Mark had a nine pound release, John had a nine pound release, Chan had a 10 pound release and the crew of 6 put 21 fat tog in the fish box.
