Article by Sue Foster
It’s the last Coastal Fisherman of the year.
So what can I say about the 2014 season? Flounderwise, most people did OK in the spring and early summer. Then, as my friend that fishes the 3rd Street Bulkhead says, “Shorty came to town!”. Yes, we had lots of “short” flounder in the bay this season. One man by the name of “Ganzz” posted this comment a few weeks ago on Stripers Online about flounder fishing from the Rt. 50 Bridge: "Spent three days fishing from the Route 50 Bridge in Ocean City, MD. It was three of us using a spreader rig. We caught a total of 97 flounder, with 4 keepers.” Well, that says it all! The Oceanic Pier reports were the same all summer long, except for a couple of good weeks early in the season. “Lots of action, lots of “shorts, with only a few keepers.” With a size limit of 16-inches you would think it would be easy to catch your limit of flounder, especially from a boat.
Anglers fishing off the bulkhead between 2nd the 4th Streets did very well on keeper flounder for the locals who knew how to fish that snaggy bottom and work the tides. It’s really deep in the main East Channel and that’s where a lot of the keeper flounder were caught and will be caught, probably into mid-October. Maybe we’ll have a surprise November run like last year!
2014 was a great year for flounder fishing offshore on artificial reef sites. From mid-summer until now, almost all of the party boats and local boats big enough to get offshore did great catching keeper flounder. Party boats in Delaware practically gave up on sea bass and targeted flounder for most of the summer. I know in Ocean City, boats would target whichever one would bite the best, and many days it was flounder over sea bass.
We had a nice croaker run in the bay, though they did not have much size to them. Spot, on the other hand, tended to run large again and anglers had a hard time finding small ones to use for flounder fishing.
The great puppy drum run we had in the bay last year didn’t happen this year. It’s possible it still might, but most people down in VA are saying that that red drum have gotten bigger and bigger every year and that this year, they may have grown too big for the bays and went back out in the ocean. Of course, we haven’t seen many in the ocean yet either, but that could still be coming.
We did see some nice black drum in the surf early in the season and hope to see more this fall.
We saw some keeper stripers this spring in the surf, but not nearly enough to call it a great run!
Summertime came quick, and for the most part, fishing was decent in the surf with kingfish, spot and croaker, but not quite as good as last year. I don’t think any year could have been as good as the 2013 year on kingfish! This year was definitely the year of big rays and sharks in the surf. There was a lot of action and tons of fun had by all who were into “pullage” and wanted to have some big thing on the other end of the rod pulling long and hard!
So far this September, we are seeing a really good run of snapper blues in the surf. This is great because we just didn’t have much of a snapper blue run the last couple of years. Last year, the blues were all being caught in the bay and off the Rt. 50 Bridge, but not in the surf. This is great for surf anglers because almost anyone can catch snapper blues. A 12 to 15-inch bluefish is not bad to eat either!
We didn’t have much of a trout run this year. It started off looking good and then dropped off. Delaware waters saw more of them then we did in Ocean City.
Speaking of Delaware, anglers fishing from the rail in the Indian River Inlet seemed to have a good year up there on flounder, croaker, snapper blues and spot. Stripers were hit and miss during the summer, but the spring run wasn’t bad. Not as good as the year before, but it definitely had it’s moments. You just had to be there when those moments happened! That’s fishing, right?
Tautog action was strong in the spring. Then, as soon as the flounder bite started, most locals switched over and left the tautog alone. Anglers in boats would pull up to the Homer Gudelsky Park (West Channel) area after getting their limit of flounder and pull in a couple tautog to top off their catch. Then, the size of the tautog fell off in the heat of the summer and we didn’t hear much about them. The spring run of tautog from the Oceanic Pier was good and anglers were swinging them over the rails of the Route 50 Bridge. The 3rd Street Bulkhead produced its share of keeper tautog in the spring, then slowed up in the summer. Anglers caught spot, croaker and flounder down there. This fall should see a pick-up in tautog fishing once again. Since the size limit went up to 16-inches, I just don’t see anglers targeting them as much as they used to. Only when nothing else is biting.
Anglers fishing off the Route 50 Bridge had a good summer on blues and short stripers at night. The action was hot but legal size stripers were not plentiful. In the spring and fall we see more keeper stripers being caught and hopefully this will increase as the year goes on.
The Ocean Pier had a good year on spot, kingfish, croaker, small trout, small bluefish, and of course, sharks and big rays caught at the end of the pier.
Thanks to Larry Jock and his family for another great year of the best fishing paper ever! Thanks to Tom Jock for setting up great ads and thanks to Mary Jock for delivering papers and making me chicken corn soup when I was convalescing. Thanks to all my customers and friends who helped me along with their kind thoughts and encouragement.
I hope to “Drift Easy” again next year, so until then… good fishing!
Sue Foster is an outdoor writer and co-owner of Oyster Bay Tackle in Ocean City, MD and Fenwick Tackle in Fenwick, DE.
