Article by Capt. Lance Smith
In a “normal” year, when you first read this column, it would most likely be below freezing outside, your fishing gear and your boat will be in storage and the closest you will come to fishing in Ocean City for the next several months will be in your dreams. Until recently, and for as long as I can remember, I fell into this category of anglers who waited (miserably and impatiently) through the winter for the month of May to finally roll around. Then I discovered that limits of flounder could sometimes be caught as early as the second week of April, and even an eddy of Gulf Stream water holding tuna could push into our canyons sooner than I anticipated, so I started preparing and fishing earlier and earlier each year. I then started hopping on board the headboat, “Morning Star” with Captain Monty Hawkins for a January or February tautog trip each winter and began reading the reports of schools of large rockfish passing off our shore from December into early February. While it may not be as glamorous as travelling to southern locales, toughing out the cold of late winter and early spring in Ocean City can keep your rods bent year round.
With the incredibly warm temperatures we are having as I write this column in mid-December, the striped bass that are migrating south along our coast may be available to anglers straight through February this year. Fisherman with boats from 18-foot center consoles to 65-foot sportfisherman get in on this action by searching for diving birds and marking the large schools of bunker that are pushing through on their sounders. The methods for getting in on this bite are basically the same as the ones used to our west in the Chesapeake Bay. Trolling up to fourteen rods rigged with heavy Mojos and a few Stretch 25 diving plugs will get the job done. Once a school is located, anglers often switch to light tackle spinning or baitcasting rods and toss jigs, spoons and bucktails into the fray.
This can be some incredible action with fish up to 50 pounds being caught on tackle meant for flounder. Please remember to stay within three miles of the beach as rockfishing past this line is illegal and is often patrolled by the Coast Guard and Department of Natural Resources Police. If you don’t have your own boat, there are a few charters such as the “Lucky Break with Capt. Jason Mumford, the “Ivy Sea” with Capt. Nick Clemente and the “Lisa” with Captain Stu Windsor who will put you on the cold water fish. Capt. Stu has been plying the waters off Ocean City in his 31-foot Bertram for as long as I can remember and he will fish for whatever is biting. Surf fishing is another option for the boatless when the stripers come in close, but this fishery can really be hit or miss. For some reason, it always seems to be better in the spring than it is in the fall.
With the world record tautog catch last winter aboard Captain Kane Bounds’ “Fish Bound” and the large fish being brought back by anglers fishing on the “Morning Star” and the “Angler”, Ocean City has become the premier destination for anglers seeking world class “togging.” While most of us spend the winter dreaming of sailfish in the Florida Keys or marlin in Costa Rica, die hard fisherman from New York and New Jersey are travelling south to endure frozen fingers and the tackle busting tautog right here in our backyard. If you do some searching around the internet and scan the various fishing forums of our strange speaking neighbors to the north, you will find that there is a vast underground scene of anglers who relentlessly pursue these ugly wreck huggers. Known as “blackfish” by these Yankee diehards, they dedicate themselves to pursuing one species of fish more than any other group of anglers I can think of.
There are only a handful of charter boats in Maryland and Delaware that recognize the economic value of fishing through the frigid months to put their clients on what are truly world class fish. The most consistently running, dedicated, hands-on, knowledgeable, environmentally conscious, downright tautog catching headboat in Maryland waters is the “Morning Star”. This boat easily sees more tautog over 15 pounds caught each year than the rest of the Maryland headboat fleet combined. Captain Monty is so dedicated to his tautog fishing that while he could easily load his boat with 25 anglers every day that the weather allows, he only carries 14 fisherman each day to insure that everyone has the freedom to move around and a real shot at landing the tog of a lifetime. Fishing aboard the “Morning Star” during the winter and early spring requires reservations for spots aboard this first class vessel and sometime can be hard to come by, but well worth the wait. Captain Monty even has a diagram of positions around the rail and allows fisherman to choose their hot spot for the day on a first come first served basis.
As I mentioned before, Captain Kane Bounds on the “Fish Bound” led an angler to the new world record tautog last winter. Captain Kane runs a six-man charter boat and consistently puts his clients on respectable fish. Between Maryland and Delaware there are a handful of other for-hire boats that brave the cold for their customers.
Of course, all boats need servicing at some point and many year-round charters will pull their boats for routine maintenance throughout the winter and early spring. For this reason, it is always wise to do your homework, search the internet, and make phone calls to see who is available on the date you may want to fish. I need to interject a word of caution at this point. Not all captains and crews are the same. For example, a few years ago I gathered as many close friends, neighbors and co-workers as I could to book an entire Ocean City headboat for the day. My neighbor, a dedicated freshwater fisherman and factory worker had grown tired of all of my “tautog tales” and wanted in on the action. He convinced a number of his co-workers to spend their hard earned money on a fishing trip into the Atlantic on a February day when the high temperature reached a mere 17 degrees... all on my word of the incredible fishing to be had. While my buddies brought aboard their custom Lamiglas rods and high-end Avet combos, my friend’s co-workers were (as discussed with the Captain) going to be outfitted with the provided boat rods. These rods and reels were certainly capable of handling decent sized tautog, but each was rigged with a two hook hi-low setup using Khale (flounder style) hooks and four ounce sinkers! Not only that, but these gentleman were simply given their rods and cups of half alive green crabs to fish with, while receiving absolutely no information on what to do! The “Captain” stayed anchored on one inshore location the entire day and my father took the pool with a 20-inch fish, the only other fish being and 18-incher caught by one of my friends. Needless to say, I never talked to my neighbor much after that. The lesson here is that these are tough months for everyone, and while there are fish to be hooked, there are also some captains more concerned with making a buck than catching you some fish. Although they are by far in the minority, they do exist from all along the Atlantic coast so do some research, regardless of the time of year.
Tautog fishing is, by nature, one of the most simplistic forms of angling. Yet, it is one of the most unforgiving. One un-cinched knot, one nick in your leader or an improperly set drag can result in absolute failure when the bulldog bites. Many of you who have read my column know that while I have access to fishing for every species of fish in Ocean City, from flounder to blue marlin, my favorite target is the almighty tautog. Admittedly, I am what I am now referring to as a “bulkhead bouncer,” a fisherman who targets tog in the coastal bay. One of my boats is ill equipped to venture into the ocean and the other is too large for me to consistently set a single anchor over ocean structure. Therefore, I am confined to dropping my crabs in about thirty feet of water or less. One thing I can tell you though is that a five pound tautog in fifteen feet of water will test your tackle and fight much harder than the same fish caught in 40 to 100 feet of water. All things being equal, the same gear used for ocean wreck fishing should be the same used for tautog in the bay. Don’t come complaining to me this spring when that elusive 10 lb. “bay tog” breaks your new carbon-fiber flounder rod into splinters.
Tautog setups need not be expensive. Freshwater musky rods in the 7-foot range are a terrific and affordable alternative to the spiral, acid, outer space custom wrapped rods our brothers to the north use. Small levelwind Penn reels and Shimano Toriums are perfect matches for these rods. I personally use an Avet MXJ lever-drag reel because it is a comfortable match with Penn International 50’s and 80’s. Whatever reel you use, star drag or lever, make sure that it is capable of holding 50 to 60 pound braid and producing a drag capable of slicing that braid through your fingers should you try to pull it off the reel. Lockdown is the only way to fish for these structure loving brutes.
I like to use the drag “preset” knob on the side of lever drag reels to set my drag so that I can just barely pull line off of the reel when the drag is set to full. You can do the same with star drags by turning the drag “star” in a clockwise direction until you feel comfortable that not only will your line not break under full load, neither will your rod! Bank sinkers in the 6 to 12 oz. range, tied at the bottom of a 5-foot leader of 50 to 100 pound mono, with an appropriately sized octopus or blackfish style hook joined via loop knots 12-inches above the sinker are all that you need for terminal gear. Use a 100 lb. swivel to attach this rig to your braid mainline, drop the whole thing into a snag, wait for the tell-tale tapping of Mr. Tog and then set the hook and wind like crazy to get him out of there! All with numb fingers of course.
If you own a boat that is sitting idly on it’s lift, or on a trailer under a tarp in the back yard, you can certainly get in on this fishery by yourself. The first step for beginners is to join the Ocean City Reef Foundation and purchase one of their chart books. These charts are available at most Ocean City tackle shops and are an absolute necessity for putting your frozen fingers onto a burning drag. Through the years, the Reef Foundation and its partners have permitted and developed hundreds of acres of artificial reefs off of our coast. These reefs include materials from simple concrete blocks to sunken ships, army tanks and subway cars!
Once you have grown tired of eating all of those delicious tautog fillets, you can begin to concentrate on the pre-season flounder game.
Being one of the first boats out there, on one of those rare and gorgeous April days with clear water and warm sun-shining weather, the bay can produce some incredible flounder fishing. While spring tog may bite in just about any given condition, the ultra-early spring flounder bite depends solely on the weather. If it is cloudy, stay home. If the air temperature is below 55-degrees, stay home. If it rained heavy recently, stay home. If the tide is coming in, stay home. If the sun is shining, you can comfortably sport a t-shirt and the tide is rolling out, get your butt out there!
Most of us are still de-winterizing our boats, painting bottoms, replacing hardware and changing oil when the first flatties of the year are warming themselves in 12 to 24-inches of water and gorging themselves on molting shrimp. If you have ever owned a tortoise or a lizard like an iguana, you know that they need specific sources of heat in order to digest their food and survive our chilly house temperatures. Just like flounder, they are cold blooded and their surrounding temperature dictates their movements and feeding habits. When I was young, I had this HUGE iguana named Teddy. In the winter Teddy would hide under the couch near the heating vent and burst out from underneath (much to the fright of visitors sometimes) full of energy once she warmed up. During the summer months, with the air conditioners in each room of the beach house set on 40 degrees, she would be frozen stiff in the morning and would need to be pried from her sleeping perch as if rigamortis had set in. Set her on the deck in the sun, and in half an hour she was thawed out and ready to go! This went on for eight years! My mother even had her potty trained to go on newspaper in the house! What does this have to do with flounder? Everything. Well, maybe not the potty training part.
Flounder make the long migration back from the edge of the continental shelf every spring to spend the summer months feeding in the bay and on inshore wrecks, reefs and lumps. You would think that with this migration pattern they would first be caught on inshore wrecks, than in the inlet and finally in the upper portions of the bay. Well, you would be wrong. As we know from migrating cold-blooded and warm-blooded species, they can travel long distances without feeding by expending very little energy. Once this migration is complete though, they must either replenish their fat or perish. For this reason, the very first flounder of spring will bypass everything in order to get warm. After all, what good are hordes of baitfish if you can’t digest them or even have the energy to chase them down in the first place!
The two most popular spots for ultra-early spring flounder fishing are the flats north of the Thorofare and the area around the Route 90 Bridge. The flats attract flounder because they offer very shallow water with quick access to small, deeper channels. The bottom here is sandy, and doesn’t warm as quickly as muddy bottoms so think shallow when fishing at this location. Staying in less than five feet of water is the key to catching flatties. Remember, a flounder’s shape allows them to stay hidden and feel safe in very skinny water, sometimes less than 16-inches or so. The area around the bridge is different. Here, the bottom is muddy and flounder stage in this spot because the sun warms the dark bottom and keeps the temperature slightly elevated. Depths here range from 4 to 6-feet and some people claim that the scent from the bait in the season’s first crab pots lining the channel also attract the flounder.
In either location, keep in mind that there aren’t many large baitfish around just yet. Instead, try mimicking shrimp with tandem rigged 3/8 oz. bucktails with small GULP! trailers and keep your jigging motion slow and methodical.
As always in the spring, an outgoing tide will bring the warmest water of the day out from the shallow back bays and turn the bite on. This can be some of the most exciting flounder fishing of the year as most of the fish are over the minimum legal size and they are literally starving! So start greasing your reels, putting fresh line on, tying rigs and working on your boat. Don’t wait to read about the first flounder of the year. Prepare yourself and be the person who catches it!
Before you know it, football season will come to an end and hunting seasons will be over.
Thankfully, I like college basketball, but even that can’t fill the void in my soul of not having any fishing options. Well, we do have options and there is nothing like a trip on the ocean and a cooler full of fillets to cure cabin fever. When you just can’t stand it anymore, do some internet surfing, see what’s biting and get your lazy, post-holiday, oversized butt off the couch and give it a shot. Not only will the fish be here before you know it, they are probably being caught by some brave fisherman right now!
Lance Smith is an outdoor writer and Captain of his family’s boat, ‘Longfin”.
