By Scott Lenox
Published on August 13, 2024
It was another beautiful day in and around Ocean City with sunny skies, light winds and very pleasant August temperatures. Lots of people were out fishing and there should be more as great weather is forecast for the next few days.
Captain Dave Caffrey of On the Run Charters had a great day for his group and was able to catch some nice flounder using live bait.
Captain Will of Local Hooker Charters had a great day in the ocean with some solid mahi and a few big triggerfish.
Anglers fishing with Captain Chase Eberle of Chasin’ Tides Charters had fun with flounder and bluefish at the Route 50 bridge.
Captain Chris Mizurak of the Angler reported nice conditions and good fishing with sea bass and flounder coming in coolers.
Folks had a great time fishing the Judith M from Bahia Marina and caught a ton of sea bass on both 5-hour trips.
Captain Monty Hawkins of the Morning Star had a nice “day off” today with sea bass, mahi-mahi and the greatest marine mammal show he has ever seen.
My fishing post. More whale/dolphin videos in a separate post. From below – “We were about to see the largest gathering of marine mammals I had ever seen…”
The flags hung firmly on their poles, the starlight reflected on the smooth surface of the sea. It was Tuesday, August 13, 2024, 2:30 a.m. We were on our way to Baltimore Canyon to hopefully catch a mix of tilefish with some friends and our crew.
At sunrise we had north-easterly winds of over twelve knots – a bit of whitecaps. These winds were exactly where I expected the current to be today.
Joey and Conner had plenty of trolling gear and got a few bites. False albacore is a great bait for tiles.
Further afield I tried some commercially available poly balls for lobster gear to catch dolphinfish. There we spotted highly trained peanut dolphins – they wouldn’t even touch fluorocarbon leaders. We could also see the current ripping under the balls – wind and current together, as I expected.
Uh-oh.
Since I was nowhere near the depth I wanted to fish for golden salmon and blue striped bass, I had Connor try a 16 ounce rig with no bait.
He couldn’t stay down.
Oh, oh, actually…
Expecting more than 3 pounds to settle on the bottom – and it was hard work doing that with the hand crank – I headed toward where we had seen fantastic signs of life earlier.
Vic dragged himself back to shore and was searching for his life with binoculars near the starboard window of the wheelhouse when he said, “Huge fountain! Another one!”
We were about to see the largest gathering of marine mammals I had ever seen.
Vic forwent the 8×50 for trolling. Everyone on board saw whales and saddleback dolphins in every direction off the bow; soon they were all around us. Schools of 15 or more dolphins kept darting in to ride the bow wave – even our tiny wake. There were hundreds more all around us, hundreds and hundreds more in the distance.
And below?
To me, they looked like sand eels in my packs. Lots and lots of them.
A fake albacore spat out a huge sand eel. The shape justified our favorite sea bass jig perfectly, but I couldn’t see any pink, chartreuse or bright colors on the real thing.
Vic and I estimated the number at a dozen humpbacks and nine fin whales. The number of common dolphins was impossible to estimate accurately – a thousand or more, I estimate.
That was by far the most whales and dolphins I have ever seen.
During this big NatGeo moment, we also got bitten twice by..? Wahoo?
And as always, the (not at all true) old saying applied: “Unlucky tuna fishing, lucky reef fishing.”
No tuna.
No tiles.
But we definitely caught some nice sea bass and also a nice amount of peanut/bailier mahi.
Also saw some sunfish, a leatherback turtle and a loggerhead turtle.
The ocean is a great place to spend a day off.
Cheers,
Monty
