Posted on September 14th, 2016
This title may be a bit of an understatement. We usually see a good run of white marlin in September, but what is going on right now is exceptional. Boats fishing from the Wilmington Canyon to the Norfolk Canyon are experiencing some white marlin fishing that can truly be described as prodigious (looked that one up). If you don’t feel like looking up the definition of prodigious, other words I could use would be monumental, legendary, epic…..awesome! The report from the Ocean City Fishing Center and Sunset Marina is that several boats today released multiple white marlin. Five, seven, ten white marlin releases was the norm, and some boats had over 20. There are boats staying overnight to take advantage of the early morning bite and staying out all day to see just how many fish they can see and catch. One boat out of Sunset Marina even caught five different species of billfish on an overnight trip. That’s a white marlin, a blue marlin, a spearfish, a sailfish and a swordfish….it’s also incredible. If you’ve ever wanted to catch a white marlin, now is the time to do it and Ocean City is the place.
I had the pleasure of fishing on board the Reel Direct with Captain Brandon Speilman out of the Ocean City Fishing Center today for a new episode of Hooked on OC and we had a great time. Captain Brandon offered up the trip last minute and grabbed up mates Kayvan Bahrami and Bobby Fletcher who did an awesome job for us in the cockpit. We had John and Jamie from Crabs to Go and Kevin from Bayview Homecare on board and we had some great luck trolling the Norfolk Canyon. We probably saw upwards of 30 white marlin, had bites out of half of those and ended up with seven releases. Jamie and Kevin both caught and released their first white marlin and John and I caught a couple as well. It should make for a great episode of the show.
Captain Luke Blume on the C Boys out of Sunset Marina was down there with us and he and mate Jon Henry put owner Paul Crampton Jr, Paul III and Jamie on eight white marlin releases and a couple of mahi.
Rhonda’s Osprey with Captain Joe Drosey was in on the action today as well putting his crew on six white marlin releases.
September is also a good month for flounder fishing in the ocean. The flounder stage up on the inshore and offshore wrecks and reefs before they head out to deeper water for the winter and if you know what you’re doing you can catch them up. Captain Monty Hawkins on the party boat Morning Star out of the Ocean City Fishing Center had a “real fine” day today. A couple of guys had limits of flounder and there was a nice sea bass bite.
Bear at the Oceanic Pier in downtown Ocean City submitted a photo of Brittney Skiles from Lancaster, PA who caught this huge 25″, 10 1/2 pound sheepshead from the north sea wall on the pier’s sand fleas.
