Posted on December 15th, 2023
Check out our “12 Days of Christmas at Atlantic Tackle”!!
We had a little breeze out of the west today, but it was nice and sunny and an overall nice December day. The boat ramp in West OC was packed with trucks and trailers owned by fishermen out trying their luck for what’s biting this time of year.
Something that is usually not biting this time of year, but has been biting very well the past few weeks are the bluefin tuna that are just off the beach. Some really nice fish have been caught and harvested, and we’ve even had some fish larger than the 73″ maximum that have been released. Today, Travis Smith and brothers Bob and Dave Werner caught this very nice 57″ bluefin that weighed in at 125 pounds. The fish ate a 6 oz Joe Shute with a ballyhoo behind it just 4 miles off the beach.
Captain Chase Eberle of Chasin Tides Charters had a nice day of bottom fishing on the ocean today when he put his anglers on a limit of tautog and this nice red drum.
Captain Monty Hawkins of the Morning Star had a nice day of inshore toggin’ today.
Light rail toggin 12/14/23 Stayed tight to the beach today. Was in no mood to deal with 18/19 knots of west wind any further off. It’s all about ‘fetch’. The more miles of open water a wind can come across, the worse sea heights will be. Vahe and Renat dropped 20 blocks and some teracotta pipe at Sue’s Block Drop (where Tanner snapped some pics!) – I spun around to anchor. Those fellows didn’t collect on their reef karma, but they sure caught a lot of tog. Fishing sure wasn’t slow. I’ve seen incredibly worse. Mark even took a Morning Star limit of 2 males/1 fem. Put back lots of “Third Fin Rips” including 5 that had previously been marked. See Murray’s fish and one on the measuring board for examples of Third Fin Rip.. No Jumbos. I think we’ll have to have cbass rippin good for a decade or so before that’s the case. I used to catch DD tog in sight of land quite regularly – a lot of em. But when sea bass closures began? Effort blew up on tautog – inshore especially. Same thing happened with flounder inshore. When fluke were closed with absolute garbage data showing 50,000lbs of summer flounder caught from MD’s OC & Assateague Beaches (yeah right!) Fifty Thousand Pounds Caught Surfcasting.. Uh Hu.. Closed in September, suddenly a whole lot of flounder fishermen needed something to do – suddenly the inshore tog stock was sheared at size limit. Guys that had kept it to themselves are still crying about it. NOAA says they’re going to fix MRIP. For now? More pain from bad data. Tomorrow another sea bass trip – then a big blow. First real one in a while. Hope it doesn’t kill the bite!Cheers, Monty
