Article by Capt. BJ Pietryak
This week in Ocean City crowds have been the biggest factor when it comes to fishing. Although the main bulk of tourists will not arrive for another week, the waters are still full of boats with an abundance of beautiful weather!
Black Drum, Rockfish, & Bluefish
Assateague Island has started to slow for black drum catches as many of the fish have moved into the Delaware bay for the spawning season. On the south side of the island near the Virginia line a few nice eating size drum have been caught. The big news on the beaches in Ocean City is the bluefish blitz that happened last week. Several large schools of blues moved into the beach area delighting anglers all along the Maryland coast. George Brown got in on the action just off the docks at Frontier Town with 3 nice slammer blues. Tim Hall also hit paydirt sporting a few quality snappers. Cassey Lee caught a big bluefish from the inlet. Kevin McNeiels got a big slammer measuring 26”. Most of the fish were caught on cut bait on mullet rigs. On Assateague Island a few stripers were caught but the bite has really slowed down. It seems that the fish are past the MD/DE line and heading north to their summer home. Cut bait and large surf clams have accounted for the few catch reports I’ve received.
Sea Bass & Flounder
Sea bass was on fire with numerous limits returning to the docks, but is has cooled a little over the past weekend. Most of the limits are coming from deeper wrecks and structures in the 100-130 ft range. The Great Eastern Reef was the hot spot for last week with several boats reporting limiting out. The Jack Spot reef area has also been a hot spot with some large fish, however not the numbers as the Eastern Reef. Mike Renzi fished out of Sunset Marina and got into some citation size sea bass. Vincent Cannuli fished out of Ocean City and was rewarded with sea bass, a few out of season tog and some ribbonfish caught on his trip. Joseph Blair said the sea bass bite was hot in the morning hours with his group returning to the dock with over 150 keepers. That's a great limit to bring home. I'm sure he will be eating well for quite a while.
Many anglers have waited for the fall season to load up on big sea bass, however, in the past 3 years sea bass in the spring has been as strong if not better than the fall. The “Angler” headboat reported good catches of sea bass all week. The biggest pool fish last week was caught on an Ocean Arsenal sand eel, red in color. The “Ocean Princess” finished it’s last 7 hour trip last week with many happy clients on board. Lots of big fish are still around to be had and the fish are eager to bite, Capt. Victor reported. All the headboats in Ocean City are getting ready to change to their 4 hour trips for the summer. These trips do get very crowded and you should make a reservation in advance to assure that you have a place along the rail. Tommy Kemp took his first trip on his boat this year and reported like me, that he was a little late getting out to the fishing grounds! He still managed to have a great day on the water bringing home several nice keepers for dinner. Clam is still the top producer with jigs being a close second. David Ditch was out at the Great Eastern Reef and kept 24 big slammer sea bass and threw back around a hundred fish. David stated they were only interested in the bigger fish, returning many that were actually keeper size back to the ocean. The bite tapered off around 11 am which is the report I got from most sources.
Looking to flounder, the bite has been very consistent in the back bays with good size flatties caught in all the normal spots. The backside of Assateague Island was the best chance of catching one of these tasty fish for dinner and the Thorofare was a close second. Squid and shiner combo remains the go to bait but I am hearing more fish being caught on Gulp bait every day. The charter boat “Get Sum” was out on the water doing what they always do... catching big quality flounder! They posted a lot of photos stating that the keeper ratio is definitely getting better as the water warms. The “Tortuga” headboat was also out last week making a splash in the bays catching some nice quality fish. Brian Stewart also caught a few nice flatties just behind Assateague Island. With the warmer weather starting to arrive, the quality and amount of keeper fish should increase. The “Angler” reported their first flounder out of the ocean, which is a good sign that water temps are on the rise. On the ocean, the main bait is usually a bigger profile, such as Gulp baits in the 5” size. Squid and shiners work well, but when targeting the ocean fish a larger profile seems to work better. I received a few reports in DE and MD that a few spot were caught. When targeting a trophy flounder, live spot bait on a circle hook is a hard combo to beat. You will not get the same amount of bites as when using Gulp or squid but the quality of fish is usually much better. A few croaker were caught last week but the water is still too cold for any numbers of this specie.
Crabbing & Clams
Clamming on the bay side of Assateague Island has started to really get better with many rakers catching a nice basket of clams for dinner. The clams are still quite deep and need to be raked up rather than finding them right on the surface of the sand. Wilfred Handel, a commercial crabber, said that he has crabs readily available out of Ocean Pines and that crabbing has been doing very well despite the Chesapeake reports.
Until next week...
Tight lines and fins up! §
