Article by Dale Timmons
I received several comments after last week’s column on summer flounder catches and the MRFSS(Marine Recreational Fisheries Statistics Survey). Just want to make sure you folks realize that the words were Joe O’Hara’s, not mine. All I did was pass along his excellent observations, and he deserves all the credit. The comments I received were in complete agreement to the fact that recreational anglers are getting completely shafted by the inaccurate counts generated by the MRFSS. Buddy Siegel, of Oyster Bay Tackle, who says he “used to number crunch in my prior life,” even sent me spreadsheets he created that were based on flounder intercept reports. They basically confirm Joe O’Hara’s own observations. The problem, the way I see it, anyway, is getting anyone in the National Marine Fisheries Service or the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission to actually listen and do something about it…this whole farce has been playing for years and years now, and unfortunately I don’t see it changing anytime soon…
Spadefish don’t get very big—a 14-pounder is huge—but they pull like the dickens. Most are caught over wrecks or around other structure like the pilings at the Chesapeake Bay-Bridge Tunnel. I ran across an unusual fishing report a while back, however, about a gentleman from Ocracoke, NC named Andrew Paduch who was casting a plastic grub from the beach when he hooked and landed a 9-pound spadefish. Since he was casting a grub, I assume he was fishing for flounder or speckled trout, maybe puppy drum, and using fairly light tackle, so I bet he had the fight of a lifetime. Spadefish become fairly abundant in this area in the summer when the water warms. They are usually found over wrecks at places like Winter Quarter Shoal, and I’m sure some of the artificial reef sites are holding spades. If you want to fish for them, clams will usually work, though their primary diet is jellyfish. Use small, number 1 or 2 hooks (some anglers swear by red hooks) and fish several baits at different depths, like one or more under bobbers, one or two floating freely with just a split shot as weight and at least one on the bottom. Chumming with chopped up clams helps a lot, but don’t overfeed…use just enough to get them going…
I was walking down the dock at one of the local marinas last week when I noticed a nice ball of small bunker (menhaden) daisy chaining in one of the slips. It was the first time I had seen them this year, but a lot of baitfish have moved into the bays in the past couple of weeks, including bunker and spot. I’m sure there are also finger mullet up in the canals, and the numbers of silversides should be on the increase as well. Live bunker make good baits for flounder, stripers and gray trout (weakfish), though the latter are pretty scarce. They are tougher to keep alive than spot, but if you have a good live well and don’t put too many in it at one time, they will stay alive for several hours of a fishing trip. I usually hook them through the lips or through the snout just above the mouth. If you catch bunker with a cast net, which is the normal method, a little trick that I think I mentioned last year is to give them a minute or two after you net them before you dump the bait in the live well. When the bunker are stressed by capture they often secrete excrement, to put it as politely as I can. Holding them in the cast net for a minute or two will allow this to take place before you put them in the well. Otherwise, the water in the live well becomes fouled and the bait will not live as well. I use a couple of basic rigs for fishing live bunker or other baits. One is a “fish finder” type rig with a sliding egg sinker above a swivel with a two to three foot leader to the hook. This is a time honored rig, of course, but it is a pain if you want to change sinkers, so lately I have been using an in-line swivel with a dropper of 6 to 8 inches to a stainless snap for the sinker. I tie a leader of about 36 to 42 inches to one of the other eyes. An in-line swivel is basically a three-way that is “T” shaped, giving you a straight pull from line to leader. For both rigs, I usually use a 4/0 hook, either a Mustad stainless steel wide gap or a Gamakatsu octopus circle hook. The leader is usually a 30-pound test mono stick leader. You can go lighter if you think you might get more bites, but I don’t think it matters that much with a flounder, or a striper either, for that matter, and the lighter leaders just don’t hold up as well to the chafing of snags, fish, or whatever…
There was an interesting story circulating on the Internet last weekend about some guys on a tugboat out of Canaveral, FL. They were headed to South Carolina and trolling a line at 9 knots when they caught a huge dolphin (mahi mahi, the fish). These guys estimated the dorado (another name for it) to be in the 100 lb. range, and from looking at the photos they took, I believe it. One picture had one of the men lying down next to the fish, which appears to be about 6 feet long. Apparently they didn’t have enough ice to keep the fish all the way to South Carolina, however, so they cut it up without weighing it. The current all-tackle IGFA record for dolphin is 87 pounds. The largest dolphin I have ever seen here was a 71 pounder caught during the White Marlin Open many years ago. It should be a Maryland state record, but the catch report wasn’t filled out in a timely manner, and the state wouldn’t accept the catch later…
Spent last weekend at the Ocean City Tuna Tournament, and it was nice to see a lot of old friends. It seemed like the bluefin tuna almost all went to the same school, and the weights were very close. Someone called them “cookie cutter fish”. The weather was pretty decent, the crowds were good and the entries were better than expected, given the state of the economy. All in all, it was a very nice tournament, and the folks at the Ocean City Fishing Center deserve a lot of credit for a job well done. This weekend is the 5th Annual Ocean City Marlin Club Kids Classic. This tournament has become very popular very quickly. It gives the youngsters a chance to shine, and I hope you get your kids involved…
Contact Dale Timmons at [email protected] or call 410-629-1191.
