Article by Dale Timmons
The local fishing community has lost a couple more unique figures recently. First, on June 6, Capt. Art Eisenhauer, Jr. passed. Art, who everyone affectionately called “Captain Ike”, died at the age of 68 after a lengthy illness. I guess you could say Capt. Eisenhauer was “old school”. I didn’t know him all that well personally, but he always struck me as someone who went quietly about his business and was very good at what he did without having to crow about it. He ran the “Captain Ike” and the “Captain Ike II” out of Indian River Inlet since the mid to late 1980s, and on more than one occasion I took photos of his anglers with winning fish in local tournaments. He won categories in the White Marlin Open several times, as well as the Ocean City Shark Tournament and the Ocean City Tuna Tournament. Another piece of the local fishing picture has faded, and he will be missed.
Just last week we lost another colorful character with the passing of “Skip” Johnston. Skip, whose real name was Earle, was the owner and operator of Skip’s Metal Magic on Sunset Avenue in West Ocean City. Skip was a talented and knowledgeable metal fabricator who often came to the rescue of local boat operators as well as building hood systems for many local restaurants and the popcorn cases for such well known businesses as Fisher’s Popcorn.
If it was metal, Skip could build it or fix it. He was also a talented artist who worked in metal. He built the big fishing reel mailbox at Ake Marine, and I remember a beautiful tarpon and an outlandish big double-barreled shotgun replica crafted from stainless steel. He also made the giant fishhook weigh station at the White Marlin Marina. Skip loved to fish himself, both inshore and offshore. He fished tournaments for many years with his friend Capt. Dave Birkett on the “Shadowfax”, but he would only rarely get his picture taken because he said his customers would complain that he was always fishing instead of working on whatever it was they were waiting for. Skip had a dry, cutting sense of humor, and he liked to tease, and there is now a big empty place on Sunset Avenue…
There is a well known charter boat in Ocean City called the “Virginia.” It is run by Capt. Fred Phillips, who is probably the oldest working charter boat captain in the area. The boat is named for his classy wife, Virginia Phillips, and I want to wish her a belated “get well”. Seems like Miss Virginia recently had a heart bypass operation, and as someone who has been down that road I want to wish her a speedy recovery and all the best in the future…
Getting back to some nuts and bolts, there are more and more anglers who target flounder around ocean wrecks and artificial reef sites. The party boats are also doing well with the flatties on occasion and sometimes even target them. A reader recently asked me if you fished for flounder in the ocean the same way as you do in the bay. I’m not an expert on this fishery, but I guess my answer would be “yes and no.” Yes, because you can just use your usual bay flounder rigs with frozen shiners or live minnows and sometimes do very well on fluke in the ocean. No, because many anglers who specifically target big flounder in the ocean often use slightly different techniques or baits. A friend of mine who used to fish the wrecks quite often preferred a large bucktail such as a two or three ounce Spro jig baited with a big strip bait such as a piece of squid, bluefish or bunker, even sea robin or lizard fish. The new Gulp! baits also work well as a trailer, especially the seven-inch jerk bait style. Flounder respond very well to jigging techniques such as bouncing a big bucktail slowly along the bottom. Some anglers take the rig a step further by tying a dropper 18 to 24 inches above the bucktail jig with a baited hook that may or may not be dressed with Mylar or a spinner blade. A plain jig head with a big plastic twister in the 6 to 8 inch range can also work well for flounder, and you can still dress it with a strip bait. Sometimes big strip baits are best rigged with a “stinger” hook in or near the tail end of the “meat.” I make a rig modeled after one used in Alaska for halibut. It is basically two 5/0 hooks snelled in tandem several inches apart for using big strip baits and has a large Spin ‘N Glo® float just above the hooks for an attractor. The flounder like it, but I’ve found it is best fished when there isn’t a lot of current.
Some anglers also jig flounder with a “metal” such as a Sting Silver or a Hopkins lure. A veteran boat captain, it might have even been Capt. Bob Gowar, once told me the flounder like to hang out on the northeast corner of a wreck or other structure. I haven’t done it enough to know whether that is true or not, but I do know the flounder like to lay in scour holes created by the currents around structures, so you need to get your baits in pretty close…finally, my best advice would be to take a trip with someone like Capt. Monty on the “Morning Star” who has been targeting ocean flounder…you might be amazed at what you can learn…
Talk about an incredible catch! Just a week after I wrote about the 857-pound mako shark that is mounted and on display at the south end of the boardwalk, angler Jim Hughes, Capt. Terry Layton and the crew on the “Nontypical” smashed the Maryland state record with an 876-pound mako caught during the Ocean City Shark Tournament last weekend. Publisher Larry Jock took several photos of the “business end” of the big mako, and it is not a pretty sight that you would want to see if you were treading water out there in 500 fathoms. I wonder how many times she had bitten the tail off a swordfish gently sunning itself at the surface. The big female was 137 inches long overall, which is about 11.5 feet, and it had a tremendous girth of 74 inches. The existing state record mako, a 766 pounder, was caught by Frank Gaither on the “Slick Chick” in 1984. Fittingly, Frank was on the dock Saturday evening when the new record mako was brought to the scales. Congratulations go out once again to the gang on the “Nontypical” as they continue on their amazing hot streak…I just hope one of them went out and bought a lottery ticket…
Contact Dale Timmons at [email protected] or call 410-629-1191.
