Article by Capt. Lance Smith
Well, if you missed it. Last week, I wrote about catching and storing your own large live baits. The column focused on using both hooks and cast nests for procuring bait such as Norfolk spot, mullet and peanut bunker. So, if you don’t have a copy, get one from a friend or stop in the Coastal Fisherman office by the commercial harbor in West OC and tell Mama Jock you need one! It’s that time of year when the spot are easy to catch, the mullet are schooling and the peanut bunker are finally big enough to attract decent sized fish. If you really want to catch the fish of a lifetime here in Ocean City, or anywhere along the Atlantic Coast for that matter, you simply cannot beat a big and frisky live bait. Whether you are fishing in the back bay, the inshore wrecks and reefs or out in the canyons, nothing grabs the attention of a trophy fish like a “livey.”
Now that your bait pen is full of good sized baitfish, the livewell on your boat is pumping clean, fresh saltwater or you’ve drilled a 5-gallon bucket for shore fishing, it is time bait up. My personal favorite reason for using big live baits is that doormat flounder love them. This is by no means a drop and catch fishery though. It can be tough, it can be downright frustrating, but it can also put a 30-inch flattie on your wall.
Out of all of the live baits available to us this time of year, I have found mullet to be the best for big flounder for several reasons. To begin with, they are extremely bright and flashy.
Flounder are predominantly sight feeders and that silver flash in the usually murky depths will grab their attention. Second, they will stay alive for many drifts and are so active that you can feel them down there swimming on your hook. This makes it easier to detect a strike. Even though most bites on these big baits are so violent you will swear you hooked a rockfish, sometimes you simply no longer feel your bait swimming and your rig stops drifting. The third reason I love mullet for doormats is that their hydrodynamic shape makes them much easier to swallow then a large spot. Don’t get me wrong, spot and bunker will certainly catch their own share of flounder, but try some mullet first.
The rig for live baiting with these oversized goodies is as simple as rigging gets and works for every fish that swims by changing the hook size and leader poundage. Slide an appropriately sized egg sinker (as little as possible to constantly bounce bottom) onto your mainline, tie on a small swivel and attach your choice of hook on a 24 to 36-inch leader. This rig allows you to drop the bait back in free spool and give the fish time to swallow your bait without ever feeling the sinker’s weight. For flounder I like to use a light baitcasting setup with twelve pound braid and a 20 pound fluorocarbon leader for its abrasion resistance. Fish these baits straight down and as close to the boat as possible because, if you are fishing in the right area, there will be plenty of snags around. The more line you have out, the less the angle between your rod tip and sinker is and the more likely you are to become hung up. Doormat flounder in the bay, just like their brothers offshore, love to hang near structure. Fishing around the Route 50 Bridge, the old concrete plant, the jetties and the snaggy bottom from Second to Fourth Street can be great, deep water places to target big flounder. These areas are best fished on a slacking tide. Don’t forget skinny water though. My biggest flounder to date, a 29.5-inch doormat that weighed about twelve pounds was caught on a huge, eight-inch live mullet in only eight feet of water. I hooked and lost one of similar size the very next day in the EXACT same location at EXACTLY this time of year!
Once you have found some flounder and actually get a bite, the hardest part of this whole complicated mess begins. No matter how large a flounder is, it is going to take him some time to swallow your oversized offering. Actually, it’s going to take a long time. I have had absolutely vicious strikes that almost tore the rod from my hand, free spooled the bait, counted slowly to 100 (yes 100!) and still pulled my bait out of the fishes mouth. By the time I set the hook on my largest flounder, we had drifted at least 150-feet from where the bite first occurred, and the hook was barely in the tip of the fish’s lower jaw! If I get bit on a big live bait and there are only one or two people fishing with me, I will tell them to pull their lines in while I use the boats engine to hold us in place over the feeding flatty. When you think you have waited long enough after a bite, count to 30, and then count to 30 again! If you wind in a big spot or mullet and it is missing all of its scales, has teeth marks a quarter-inch apart on it and has an expression like it just saw Lucifer himself, you just missed the fish of a lifetime. It happens. Put a fresh one on and try again. This is the reason that I use baitcasting gear instead of spinning gear. Yes, it can be done with a spinning rod, but with a conventional reel I can lift the rod while letting line out, put my thumb on the spool as I lower the tip to see if I can feel the fish chomping away, and simply take my thumb off and let him keep trying to choke that thing down.
Rockfish or stripers, or whatever you choose to call them, love live mullet as well. They love live spot more though. The problem is that sometimes the only spot that local tackle stores have on hand are big enough to eat! Of course, a very large striper will eat one of these baits, but we aren’t as blessed in Ocean City with the sheer number of larger stripers that the Chesapeake Bay typically holds. Most of the early season rockfish caught here at the beach will be under the 28-inch legal limit and prefer spot in the four to six-inch range. Like flounder, rockfish certainly won’t hesitate to eat a live bunker. In fact, bunker probably make up 90% of their diet. The problem is castnetting bunker large enough to get a stripers attention, and having a livewell large and powerful enough to hold loads of bunker so that you can constantly replace the dead one on your hook. They just don’t live as long on a hook as spot or mullet do. Whichever live bait you choose to use, make sure you have enough that you don’t get stuck fishing a dead one because you are afraid of running out of bait. A dead spot on your hook, spinning in the current, might as well have a big BIOHAZARD sticker on it.
When fishing for stripers there are essentially two “go to” spots in Ocean City. The first is the Route 50 Bridge. Depending on the current you can choose either to drift or to anchor at the bridge. On an incoming tide, I like to start up under the bridge on the north side and drift back to about the Lazy Lizard Restaurant before I start over. The bridge span from Ocean City to the first sandbar on the north side is where most stripers hang. There are plenty of fish to be caught by fishing the south side of the bridge, there just isn’t quite as much room because of the large sandbar just west of the Drawbridge itself. On an outgoing tide, I prefer to anchor on the North side of the bridge. How far I anchor from the bridge depends on how hard the current is running. If the tide is slacking or running slowly, you want to anchor fairly close to the bridge. I will often get within ten feet on a slack tide. If it is ripping through however, you want to back up quite a bit. The idea is to use the smallest amount of weight that will allow you to drop your bait straight over the side of the boat and yet position it within a foot or two of the bottom once it has drifted to the pilings. Baitcasting rods are perfect for this situation too because you can use your thumb to bounce your bait back into position. On a slowly running tide, you can leave your bait in place once it reaches the bridge. On a hard tide though, you will want to reel in and repeat the drifting back of your bait over and over. If you use a heavy weight and just allow your bait to sit on bottom under the bridge, it will surely spin and quickly die.
Ignoring the shallower water on the west half of the bridge is a mistake. There are still plenty of rockfish here, but this area provides fisherman with a much greater chance of catching weakfish (sea trout), red drum, and my favorite, midnight flounder. While it is wise to use a heavier rod/reel setup when fishing the deep water near the Drawbridge (I suggest #40 braid at least and a conventional rod with some backbone), you can get away with using your flounder setup here in the shallower waters. Keep your leader on the heavier side though, #40 fluorocarbon is a good choice. I have been surprised by many a doormat flounder when fishing the deeper areas with live spot, especially on a slack tide. If you really want to catch some nighttime flounder though, hit the small pockets of 6-to 8-feet of water scattered amongst the shallower flats against the bridge on the western side. I believe that because the water is shallower here and flounder are primarily site feeders, the lights from the bridge penetrate deep enough for them to feed as if it were daylight. A great way to catch some flounder, drum and weakfish in this area is to locate a small pocket of deeper water right up against the bridge and either anchor just up-current of it, or off to the side of it. The current always runs less severe on this side and you can often get away with a half or three-quarter ounce egg sinker. If you anchor up-current of a deeper pocket, drop a live mullet straight down off of the boat until you hit bottom. Then, lift the rod up and let slack out until the sinker reaches bottom again. Repeat this a bunch of times and you will have effectively “walked” your bait through the hole and up under the bridge. Once your bait is near the bridge and at the end of your fabricated drift, leave it there for a few minutes and then begin to wind it back in ever so slowly, maintaining contact with the bottom. This technique can be deadly!
The other “go to” spot for local rockfish is the South Jetty of the Ocean City Inlet, particularly the oceanside tip. Anchoring here is prohibited because it is part of the channel, so drifting is your only option. Depending on the tide, you can either start outside of the tip and drift in towards the bay, or start halfway up the jetty and drift out past the tip. Sometimes the wind and tide will allow you to drift straight across the tip in a North to South direction and you can really hammer some stripers. When fishing here, especially at night, always keep your motor running and watch for submerged boulders. Some of the jetty rocks hide just a few inches under the water at low tide and are a short distance from the jetty itself.
While most rockfish are caught on the inside of the South Jetty, drifting the outside, or oceanside with big live baits can produce all kinds of different species. All three species of bait covered so far will work out here. There are doormat flounder, weakfish, bluefish, stripers and red and black drum. Whichever side of the jetty you prefer to fish, you may have to adjust the size of your weight several times to get down into the strike zone. When the South Jetty is crowded with boats, don’t forget the North Jetty. There are plenty of fish to be caught here to, especially at the very tip, and again in the deep pocket just east of the fishing pier.
As I wrote last week, all of these baits can also be used from shore. You just need some five gallon buckets, rope and a drill. One of my favorite ways to fish from shore with spot and mullet is to drop them straight down under some lights in 6 to 8-feet of water and walk them slowly with or against the current. A friend and I used to absolutely crush big flounder at the old Shantytown Fishing Pier by castnetting live mullet in the marina and dropping them straight down against the bulkhead under the lights. There are still a few places in town that you can do this, especially at the Oceanic Fishing Pier. Here, you can actually catch bait in the shallower water at the beginning of the pier, store it in your pre-drilled five gallon bucket (tied off and hung in the water of course), and fish them directly next to the pilings. I can’t recall if the Ninth Street Pier has lights or not, but using this technique there and along the bulkhead between Second and Fourth Streets will work as well.
Remember, you don’t need to cast out too far, because you will most likely get snagged if you do. The largest flounder are often hidden amongst all of the remnants and junk directly underneath these locations. Be patient and always keep in mind that moving your bait slowly along the bottom, whether winding it in or walking it along, will far outproduce just letting it sit there. There is an exception to this. If you happen to be walking or bouncing your bait along the bottom, and you suddenly feel your rig drop off into a deeper hole of three feet or more, leave it there for a few minutes.
Fishing these jumbo-sized live baits can be extremely frustrating at times. If you want to catch that one big fish though, you may have to sit and watch as people around you catch smaller versions, one after another. Again, be patient and see it through. Your fish will come. You have to be dedicated and steadfast in the commitment that you are going to fish the whole day for just ONE fish. You must resist the temptation to switch to a smaller bait or lure just to get in on the action. If you choose to take a trip on a headboat, ask the captain if he has a livewell that you can store some bait in and then get them in there as quickly as possible. These baits work just as well on the inshore wrecks and reefs.
For you offshore guys, keep in mind that you can take advantage of these baits too. They work exceptionally well when chunking (day or night) and can be free spooled back into a trolling spread after a white marlin, tuna or dolphin is hooked up. I haven’t seen any yet, but many years the “cobb” mullet will show up in the fall and can be up to 12-inches long! They are perfect offshore baits, but they will leap out of any livewell without a cover on it.
If I were chartering a bay or inshore boat at this time of year, I would call ahead of time and ask the captain if he can make these baits available for your trip. Or, if you are going on a 2 hour flounder trip, try to bring some along for yourself. No matter how or where you choose to fish your oversized baits, treat them as gently as possible. Allow your target time to swallow them, and follow through with the plan. The big one is down there somewhere, I guarantee it.
On a side note, I will be filling in as mate on weekdays for a while aboard the bay flounder boat “Flatty Caddy,” docked at 307 Dorchester Street in Downtown Ocean City. Come fish with us or just drop by and say hi, I actually enjoy answering questions, so don’t be hesitant!
Lance Smith is an outdoor writer and Captain of his family’s boat, the “Longfin”.
