Daily Local News (West Chester, PA)
Flounder fires up, but tuna tapers off
While record high temperatures had our corner of the country sweltering this weekend, saltwater fishing prospects were cooling off for some species but heating up for others. Out at the canyons, tuna fishing in particular has lately tapered off along our Jersey, Delaware and Maryland coastlines. Just a few weeks ago offshore anglers trolling for tuna had no trouble boating limits of yellowfin with decent numbers of bluefin and bigeye mixed in. Unfortunately, in a classic case of bad timing, the tuna bite trailed off just before the 32nd Annual Ocean City (Maryland) Tuna Tournament’s opening gun.
Last year I put an angling team together to fish the 31st Annual version of the tourney, a team that included me, my brother Dan from Brookhaven, West Chester’s Pete Werner and his son Bryan, and Chadds Ford’s Mike Maxwell and his son Mike. Fishing aboard the Bill$ for Bills with Captain Ron Callis, each of us caught tuna along with skipjack, albacore, and dolphin.
When the smoke cleared at tournament’s end, we had plenty of tuna steaks in the freezer, although none of our catches ever made the leader board,.
We sat out this year’s edition of the tournament which drew even more participants with 109 boats entered (five more than last year) in an attempt to win a share of the $908,000 prize money at stake. But despite an increase in hopeful tuna anglers, the catch was down significantly, an indication that, to some extent, Charlie the Tuna had left the building — or at least abandoned many of the distant offshore canyons within range of the Ocean City fleet.
Tournament action was light this year. While last year’s winning tuna hit the scales at a hefty 144 pounds, the top tunas this year were a pair of 99 pounders. Successful boats still found fish at the 20-30 fathom lumps, Massey’s, Baltimore Canyon, Lemke’s Canyon, and the Norfolk Canyon. The week after the tourney I visited the docks to find many charters returning from the deep blue boasting coolers full of nice gaffer dolphin (mahi-mahi) but with very few tuna among them.
However, while the yellowfin have made themselves scarce of late, marlin, both white and blue, have begun to show up in greater numbers and have been cooperating with anglers probing the depths of the Baltimore, Washington, and Norfolk Canyons. The marlin bite should pick up considerably as we move into late summer and early fall while bolstering this town’s claim to being the “White Marlin Capital of the World.”
A few wahoo have also made the offshore scene, primarily in the Baltimore Canyon. Last week a jaw-dropping 109 pounder was caught by Andrew Koontz aboard the Decision in Poor Man’s Canyon. Offshore anglers who go deep are catching tilefish and an occasional swordfish. Closer to shore, party boats were still catching black bass but the bite has been slacking off considerably while inshore flounder fishing at the reefs and wrecks has been picking up. Catches of weakfish and cobia have also been part of the inshore mix along with a few rockfish and mackerel and plenty of bluefish.
But at the same time the tuna catch in the ocean has tapered off, the flounder bite in the back bays has become as blistering as the weather. As regular readers of this column know, I spend quite a few hours drifting the back bays of the Maryland coast in quest of these tasty flatfish each season and vigilantly keep extensive records of my catches. On a typical July fishing foray I’ll normally hook up with a host of undersized throwbacks that don’t meet Maryland’s 16 ½ inch legal standard and with legal keepers over that minimum few and far between. For example, last year I fished just three July days, and caught 20 flounder of which just two were keepers. My most productive July to date was back in 2015 when I fished fourteen days and caught 118 flounder of which 18 were keepers.
So on Thursday morning, when I pushed away from the dock aboard my trusty craft, Open Debate, my expectations were high thanks to a report published in the Ocean City Coastal Fisherman that described flounder fishing as “excellent,” especially down in Assateague Bay near the airport. From my dock that would mean a four- or five-mile run to the south.
But I no sooner got my boat up on plane in the Isle of Wight Bay when I noticed that my favorite hotspot, a nearby stretch of bay known locally as the Thorofare, was littered with fishing boats. These included two large party boats, the Calico Jack and the Tortuga, along with multiple charter boats like the Get Sum and Lucky Break, all hired guns that make their living putting their customers on flounder. Fishing every day of the week, these guys had to know where the best fluking was. If the fleet had converged here, there was no sense going any farther. To that end I immediately cut the engine, baited my hooks, and began to drift.
As usual, I was fishing the last of the incoming tide dragging two lines with top and bottom rigs weighted with 1 ½ ounce sinkers and baited with white, green, or pink Gulp Alive four- and five-inch swimming mullets. For the last few years, white Gulp has been the go-to bait for most fluke anglers here. To keep the baits moving when the tide slowed, I paired the Gulp baits with live minnows. Water temperatures hovered around 76 degrees while air temps nudged triple digits. Aware of the scorching forecast, I left my regular fishing buddy, my English springer spaniel Phoebe, back at our beach house, content to luxuriate in the air conditioning.
Thankfully a persistent sea breeze made the heat more bearable — as did the steady fishing action. The flounder seemed eager to cooperate as boats all around me were netting fish. Fluke were also taking my baits as I kept busy unhooking a cavalcade of undersized throwbacks, shaking crabs off the line, and freshening up baits for the next three hours. On the first of the outgoing tide I boated my third keeper of the day and a few minutes later, netted the beefiest fluke, an 18 ½ inch beauty that completed my four fish daily limit, a rare feat that I’ve seldom accomplished. By the time I headed back to the dock I had the four keepers and 14 throwbacks to my credit. In terms of flounder fishing, this had been my single best July day ever.
My second best-ever July fishing foray would come the very next morning on Friday. Using the same tactics, I boated three keepers up to 18 inches (just one shy of another daily limit) and 12 throwbacks. That translated to a two-day total of 33 flounder including seven keepers. I’m not sure how long this fantastic flounder fishing will last. I won’t get out again before the end of the month. Let’s hope the fluke bite just keeps rolling on. Maybe I’ll see you on the water!