Article by Larry Budd
This Week Last Year
• The weather was the hot topic this time last year hitting over 110 degrees on Sunday that week.
• It was tough tuna fishing for the Ocean City Tuna Tournament last year. The action was light with most boats fishing on Saturday and Sunday. This did make for some close completion as the winner for the Largest Fish Division was tied between “Moore Bills” and “Reel Chaos”, both with 99 lb. bluefin. A record number of 109 boats entered and the payout was just under $1,000,000
• The marlin bite was steady but moved far south over this weekend last year. Boats that traveled 90+ miles to south of the Norfolk Canyon caught whites.
The last week for fishing was dominated by two interrelated topics, Tropical Storm Fay and the 33rd Annual Ocean City Tuna Tournament. Tropical storm Fay started to roll into the area Thursday afternoon keeping most boats at the docks. Capt. Jeremy Blunt on the charter boat “Wrecker” from the Ocean City Fishing Center did venture out and had a good day returning with 11 yellowfin tuna caught in the South East corner of the Poor Man’s Canyon. He reported a steady bite with a couple of doubles and warm water in the upper 70° mark. Friday was a wash out as the storm passed by and the tournament began!
Questions started Thursday on how or if the Ocean City Tuna Tournament would proceed. Tournament organizers Rolfe Gudelsky and Brain Tinkler worked feverishly with their teams to improvise, adapt and overcome. Rapidly changing the tournament format to a 2-day/2- fishing day event with extended registration on the now canceled Friday allowed more time for boats to evaluate as well as the tournament. On Friday it was announced the 2-day event would continue but with only a single fishing day. The number of boats ebbed and flowed over the end of last week but finished with 32 boats registered.
Weather reports for Saturday showed rough condition for the morning, but three boats chose to head out. The “Marli” under Capt. Mark Hoos, the “El Bandidos” with Capt. Mark Farnsworth and the “Sushi” under Capt. Charlie Bird. All came back to the scales with yellowfin tuna and shared that the weather settled down once they got about 10 miles out. The yellowfin bite was mainly singles hookups with a few multi hits. All the boats that day got hits early, with the “Marli” getting 5 to the boat right off the bat. They would go 12 for 16 for the day. Similar reports from the other boats that they picked their way through the day on singles.
Day two saw the 29 remaining boats head out with 21 returning to the scales making for a busy afternoon. Given that a single boat could not win in both the Largest Fish Division and Heaviest Stringer Division (a stringer is when the tournament weighs up to 5 fish together), the leaderboard shifted throughout Day 2. It was nice to see some bigeyes returning to the dock after an absence of about 10 days. These big fish pushed the boat “Big Stick” into the top slot for heaviest fish at 195 lbs.
winning $135,527 and the boat “Espadon” winning the Stringer Division with a weight of 443 lbs. earning $100,001 in award money. These bigeyes were in between the Poor Man’s and Baltimore Canyons where these captains found slightly cooler waters in the mid to low 70 degrees. Capts. shared that the yellowfins and bigeye tunas are hitting naked ballyhoo and spreader bars. “Nothing special” is the common response when asking about bait. Our coverage of the 33rd Annual Ocean City Tuna Tournament begins on page 56.
Dolphin
We are seeing a pickup in mahi catches over the past week, but mainly still small ones. The top dolphin in the tournament was 26 lbs.
Billfish
Lastly billfishing remains constant ov
er the past few weeks with increasing swordfish landings. Still remains common for those anglers trolling ballyhoo for yellowfin and coming back to the dock with release flags flying. That is of course unless you are on the crew of the “Lights Out” last Wednesday. Scott Peters and Seth Hethering headed out to the Baltimore and Poor Man’s and came back to the dock with 15 release flags flying. Always quite a sight to see.
Until next week, I’ll see you at the docks.
