Seabass Fishing

Type: Coast
Region: Ocean City
Location: Atlantic

The weather looked good on Wednesday so I decided to go fishing on the Morning Star head boat out of Ocean City Maryland. I e-mailed the captain (Monty Hawkins) the night before asking him about the weather. A small craft advisory had been issued but he told me it should be fine. The morning revealed a calm ocean with long waves. The small craft advisory had been issued due to tropical storm off the Carolina coast generating a groundswell. We arrived at our spot after a 2 hour ride and most people caught 1 or 2 keepers along with many throwbacks then the action died off. This scenario repeated itself through out the day with the captain repositioning the boat, drifting or re anchoring often then going to a new spot if the fish would not bight well. If we were a few feet off the rough bottom or wreck the fish stopped biting. Spur dog sharks hit our clam bait as often as the sea bass. These fish became a pain. You would think that you had a nice sea bass then you realized that the fish on the end of the line was a dog shark. These fish have a poisonous spur on the back so I decided to let the mate take it off. Things got better later in the day. The last spot we tried was pretty good and I caught 5 keeper sea bass. No trophies were caught though most of the fish kept were around 12.5 to 13 inches long. Lots of throwbacks were caught with most people catching up to a 100 sea bass and keeping less then 20%. I wound up with 18 keeper sea bass. Maybe 1 or 2 anglers got close to their limit of 25. Weather was good for the entire day. Tight lines all.