Article by Capt. Mark Sampson
It doesn’t matter that Labor Day has come and gone. The summer is not over - not by a long shot. But the end is on the horizon, September 22nd to be exact, that’s the “autumn equinox,” the first day since the start of spring when the sun will be below the horizon longer each 24-hour period than it will be above it. But even when it is officially “fall” it doesn’t really matter to us fishermen because there will still be fish to catch well after the first morning we have to be careful not to slip on a frosty dock or gunwale.
Still, after Labor Day there will be changes around here. At first it’s mostly all good stuff, at least for “local” fishermen. During the week the ocean and our inshore waterways will simmer down a bit with not as much boat traffic and not as many anglers lining the shorelines and fishing piers. Such activity will swell some on the weekends, but as we get deeper into football and hunting seasons even that will quell as sportsmen and women find other diversions that will keep them away from local fishing holes. More “good stuff” is that some of the fishing will (should) get better as the waters start to cool and certain species begin to prep for their bi-annual migration by fattening up on the abundance of natural bait this time of the year.
There’s not a lot of downside to late season fishing except that anglers will have to start dressing in layers again, and being that we’re now knee deep in hurricane season, any kind of weather “from great to grizzly” can slip in from one day to the next. Getting a line in the water at first light won’t require such an early alarm clock (at least until they switch-off daylight savings time) but those who head out at the same time every morning will find they’re doing a lot more running in the dark before the sky brightens up enough to switch the radar off. On the backside of the day, offshore anglers will also find themselves routinely cleaning the boat in the dark and not just on the days they fished late.
We still have a lot of fishing to do in 2017, but while last week’s nor’easter was raging I took the opportunity to do something I usually wait until the end of the season to do - I went through my logs and compared notes to see how this season compared to the last couple. In a nutshell there’s a pretty big difference in how things were then and how they are now.
These days my own Ocean City season doesn’t get started until I return from Florida in early May. Yeah, I know that I missed some incredible bluefish action in the bay and surf in April, but it’s hard to pull away from 100-pound tarpon in 85-degree weather and race home to the unpredictable spring weather we have up here. Actually, by the time I got up here this year the weather and water became very predictable – cold water, rain, cool temperatures and lots of wind! Bluefish were still snapping in the bay along with some stripers, but by the third week of May the quantities of sharks had not yet moved into their normal Delmarva haunts. They apparently weren’t so ready to leave the lower-warmer latitudes just to chase bluefish anymore than I was.
My logs show that in the first week of June the weather was still being mostly uncooperative, but by the second week of the month we were finally running more trips than we were canceling and that’s a good thing in this business! By the end of the month the heat was on and it was finally feeling like summer every day. The guys running offshore were doing quite well with the tuna and there were enough billfish and dolphin being caught that everyone seemed happy with the way the summer was shaping up.
Once we get into July most all of my trips have me no more than 5 to 15 miles from the Ocean City Inlet, which keeps me pretty focused on the conditions of the nearshore waters. In the last couple years there were times when those waters were so clear and clean in July and August that you could see the bottom when you went over the 25 to 35-foot shoals such as the 1st Lump and Little Gull, but not this year! In late June we had some pretty water inshore for maybe a week, then it turned and never cleaned up again. Since we mostly fish for sharks, that wasn’t too much of a problem since most of the nearshore sharks are accustomed to murky water and just let their noses lead them to their next meal, but some species such as the big spinners, blacktips, and hammerheads tend to be found more in cleaner water, so we haven’t seen many of them this season.
Another difference this season is the amount of bunker (menhaden) that we’ve been seeing in the nearshore waters. Usually in July and August the waters from the beach out at least 6 to 8 miles are absolutely alive with schools of bunker churning the surface. Acres and acres of baitfish everywhere you look. Again, in late June things seemed normal with plenty of bunker busting on the surface. But then we got into July and something changed and those fish just weren’t showing up anymore, and for the most part they still aren’t. Over the last couple months we’ve been marking some bunker on our depth finders and every once in a while will see a school on top, but not in the consistently huge numbers we’ve had over the last few years. Something has changed!
Another couple of fish we haven’t seen much of this season are sea trout (weakfish) and croaker. Usually by early August, we can drop a bottom rig down almost anywhere from 1 to 5 miles out and expect to catch decent numbers of croaker and small trout. But this season it’s been a different story. We’ve yet to see the first croaker and had only been picking away at a very few trout until the last fishable day before the recent blow when we had finally had a pretty good catch of them. I’m hoping that’s a sign of better things to come in September.
I’m pretty sure that the reason we’re not hearing much about cobia this year is a direct result of both the murky water and lack of bunker. Those fish are always fickle anyway, so it shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone that a little change in their environment is not good for the fishery. The offshore tuna action has also been riding a roller coaster of its own the last few weeks.
Certainly some fish are still being caught but not in the quantities anglers enjoyed earlier in the season or over the past couple years. And where are all the bigeyes this year?
As I sit here now fishing up the last few lines of this column, it’s looking pretty good for getting offshore tomorrow, which will be the first day in four that’s fit to leave the inlet. I’m hopeful that after many days of strong northeast wind, some clean water has been pushed in close to shore and is what myself and other fishermen will encounter in the morning as we run out for the first day after many. Clean, clear water slipping up on the continental shelf and working it’s way in close to shore could bring with it some of the fishing opportunities that have eluded us so far this season.
Just as the season is not over, neither is the chance that, given the right water conditions, we might just see an awakening of the rather sedated action that has proven to be the new normal for many fishermen this season.
Capt. Mark Sampson is an outdoor writer and captain of the charter boat, “Fish Finder”, docked at the Ocean City Fishing Center.
