Article by Larry Jock
The weather we have been experiencing this spring has been nothing short of ridiculous, and last week was one of the worse weeks we have seen this year. The wind just won’t stop blowing... hard!
Water temperatures in the Ocean City Inlet remained a fairly consistent 54 to 56 degrees with warmer water at the far ends of the bays during the outgoing tide.
Flounder
Even with the bad weather, the good news is that when a few dedicated anglers hit the water, they returned with some nice catches of flounder.
The Thorofare continues to be a hot spot for those in search of flatties and minnows, squid and Gulp! Swimming Mullets have been producing the best catches.
Early in the week, in 25 mph winds coming out of the east/northeast, John Rogowitz, Tony Diesel and Travis Brown trolled bucktails tipped with minnows and Gulp! artificial baits in the Thorofare and caught their limit of flounder up to 21-inches.
On Thursday, junior angler Pierce Shearin from Monkton, MD caught a 23-inch flattie that weighed in at 4 lbs. 4 oz. Pierce was also fishing in the Thorofare and caught the flounder on a live minnow.
Saturday saw winds blowing a consistent 20 mph, but that didn’t stop Seth McCauley and Matt Ferenschak from landing 3 flounder in the East Channel on minnow and Gulp! combinations. Matt had the largest fish of the trip, a 23-incher that weighed 4 lbs. 4 oz. on the scale at Oyster Bay Tackle.
Walter Moore and his dad also ignored the winds on Saturday and picked up a keeper flounder in the Thorofare and another around Harbor Island.
The headboat, “Bay Bee” had another good day on Saturday with 4 keepers during their morning trip and another 4 flounder and a bluefish in the afternoon. Capt. Mike had his anglers in the bay behind Assateague Island drifting squid and minnows.
In the Surf
The windy conditions brought nasty ocean conditions and strong currents making an already horrible spring even worse. Anglers are still waiting for the start of the striped bass run that in most years would have been almost halfway done by now. Last week, surfcasters only found a few small black drum, skates and plenty of dogfish. On Saturday, Tammy Reiter landed a 9 lb. 9 oz. bluefish while fishing off Assateague.
Sea Bass
Maryland’s Fisheries Service is waiting on Mid-Atlantic Marine Fisheries to release sea bass regulation for federal waters before they release them for state waters, but expectations are that the season will open on May 19th. The minimum size will continue to be 12.5-inches but anglers will only be allowed to keep 20 fish per trip instead of 25.
Offshore
Although a lot of boats are still sitting in dry dock, the good news is that there is a shot of good, warm water sitting outside the Baltimore and Poor Man’s Canyons where mako sharks, yellowfins, bluefins and bigeye tuna have been found. It looks like there may be some charter boats making preparations to head that way towards the end of the week when hopefully the eddy will move closer to our shores. Could make for an interesting long weekend.
I’m a firm believer that our season is long and things tend to even out over the long term. If this holds true, we hopefully have some outstanding days of fishing ahead of us. Keep the faith!
See you at the scales.
