Morning Star Fish Report

Fish Report 10/28/07

Soda-Pop &

Hi All,

Everyday we got our lines in the water was great. Um well, that is we had one really fine day on the water and 6 weather cancellations.

Getting caught up on maintenance is one thing, Q-tip cleaning & oiling the inside of the socket heads...

Ready for the weather to break!

The NE winds peaked on Thursday afternoon. A steady 35 with gusts to 40 knots had the seas kicked up to over 14 feet. 'Nother low pressure then a high - blew south with the heavy rains then back around north again. Looks fine for Tuesday.

The news is that the water temperature has dropped about 5 degrees. Should keep sliding down.

I'm certain we'll find different fishing when we get back out ~ hope it's a positive sea bass sort of change!

My favorite Uncle joined me Monday and we tested the 'better brushes' theory of bottom fishing ~ that using superior tackle yields better results. Often seen at the rail, he usually holds his own against the prevailing luck ~ catches as well as anyone. A suite of rods ready to start the day; he chose my brand new 7 1/2 ft. St. Croix.

Five flounder in the boat before I'd caught one... I dropped subtle hints that maybe I'd like to try the new stick too. You know, "Hey, can we switch rods now?" But he just wasn't picking up what I was putting out... Took a fancy to it I guess.

Fishing tackle, all of it ~the rod, reel, line, rig, bait, lure~ is important, no doubt. But then I suppose confidence is more so. So many times I have seen people convinced that they weren't going to get a bite do exactly that - Nothing. Have 'em wind up to check their hooks, line, change bait, show 'em a different way to hold the rod ~ magic! Fish On.

Many years ago when I was working deck on the old Angler, one of the bartenders at the restaurant had put together the 'Lady Anglers Fishing Club'. All waitresses on summer break; 'twas a welcome sight to have them coming down the dock in the AM I'll promise. As weeks went by they started getting pretty serious about the catching; they were getting good at it.

In those days we'd switch to sea trout, small spike trout, by mid-August. A little more of a feel to 'em than sea bassing -not unlike the flounder fishing the last few months- you had to jig the bait and then let it settle to get bites.

Also this particular summer we had the same soda delivery week after week. OK for the Coke but the orange and grape sodas were stacking up. Cases and cases piled high.

So while trout fishing a group of very attractive young women are out-catching some grumpy old guys in a big way. One guy sez, "You're givin'em special bait".

Nope ~ they'd been practicing.

He started on me again, really irritated. So I jokingly popped a can of grape soda and poured a little on the girls' bait.

Now he'd caught me! Grumpy bought a can, poured some on his bait and started catching fish. Ran out of sodas.

True story.

Sold all that orange and grape before the season was over.

Simply confidence. Believing that there will soon be an opportunity...

Better have your gear right too!

Looking forward to a spell of good weather.
See you on the rail,

Monty

Capt. Monty Hawkins
mhawkins@siteone.net
Party Boat "Morning Star"
Reservations 410 520 2076
www.morningstarfishing.com

posted by Monty # Sunday, October 28, 2007

Fish Report 10/21/07

Nothing Has Changed

Fish or Otherwise

Hi All,

Some of the finest flounder fishing I've ever seen.

But not everyday!

There's a handful of sea bass with them. Even some sea bass inside 'em. 'Fish eat fish' world out there.

We limited the boat 5 days out of 7 on flounder. Some days are easy, others a bit more work. If you can bear the pain of not catching limits of sea bass as we are so accustomed to in the fall ~ It's nice fishing.

Really hasn't changed much since late August. Surface water offshore was as high as 72.4 today. In fact, as we were coming up Shantytown Channel there were children swimming along Gudelski Park. Being mid/late October I'd be less surprised to see the first snow flurries of the year...

Some things seem on schedule though. There's patches of red in the water where millions of krill stain the surface. Soon we'll see at least a few of the great whales, perhaps even the endangered right whale that seem to think the red krill as candy.

There are many leatherback sea turtles presently using our region's waters. Some of them huge, it's as if a small car has just surfaced. They're supposed to just eat jelly fish and lots of 'em, but why do I so often see them directly over structured habitat?

Other things haven't changed either.

We still focus fisheries management almost solely on counting dead fish - the landings. Need to put into service the 'habitat' part of the plan.

104 nautical miles east of Washington D.C. lies the closest live coral reef to our nation's capitol. Fan out from 104 out to 130 NMs and you could call it a coral ecology. Based in Silver Spring, our "Coral Reef Task Force" just had their 18th annual meeting ~ in Samoa.

Some of these folks may take long weekends here; walking to the sandy waters edge, casting a thoughtful gaze upon waters that seem so unchanged.

Yet right now commercial sea bass and lobster trap fishers are scrambling to get their gear away from the low lying coral beds ~ out of harms way. They're moving thousands of traps next to large, well known wrecks or even bringing them home. It's as if a disaster were forecast ~ and is.

Virginia, it seems, has just opened a new quarter for summer flounder. Any boat that can legally land fish in VA is going to grab a piece of that action.

The target species -flounder- are presently using rocks, wrecks and corals ~ all places a lobsterman might set.

It is possible to trap flounder, but the preferred gear is the trawl. Big boats dragging big nets. And shame on you if your lobster traps are in the way.

This scene plays out almost every year. Fall comes and commercial trap fishers complain about gear loss. Not cheap; the economic burden can be brutal.

And when those guys lose traps ~ we're losing coral.

Wonder how the leatherbacks will fare.

Especially wonder how the sea bass fishers will fare...

And really wonder what use a law such as Magnusen is if no one knows what or where "Habitat" is.

Essential Fish Habitat.

Yup. Walked down to the beach and it was all still there...

Regards,

Monty

Capt. Monty Hawkins
mhawkins@siteone.net
Party Boat "Morning Star"
Reservations 410 520 2076
www.morningstarfishing.com

posted by Monty # Sunday, October 21, 2007

Fish Report 10/14/07

Flounder Amaze ~ Sea Bass Perplex

Hi All,

Sea bass... It should be sea bass. Limits of 'em.

It ain't.

Did have a few decent shots of 'em this week though. After last week's doom and despair report, written Sunday evening, we had two of the best days this fall. Yup, Monday and Tuesday some folks pushed into the upper teens. Others focused on the flatties and bagged 'em up. It's fishing...

Couple weather days -read cleaning & maintenance- then back into it.

I had hoped that the early weekdays were going to set a trend ~ not so. Back to a tough pick on sea bass with just a few folks getting into double digits ~ but high hook on flounder getting into double digits too!

This week last year we were limited out and in early 3 times. Were we to HAVE to limit out before we came home this fall ~ well, I 'spect we'd need plenty of groceries aboard.

Having fun though. Nice to mix up a few bass and fluke.

Seeing some quality tackle. It's great to see someone so skilled that they can catch fish with a "Scobey Do" rod ~ for the rest of us though, having the right stuff counts!

A certain diminutive blonde retailer of fine fishing tackle -Sue Foster- discovered that the Shimano Torium series now comes in a "14".

Ah, wonderful news. The gold Trinidad 14 sells for approximately $375.00. Same reel without the gold sells for about $170.00.

It's light, very high speed, holds gobs of 30lb. micro-braid, has a smooth drag and, were this a "Consumer Reports" article, I strongly suspect it would be given high marks for reliability.

No, I don't receive any compensation from Shimano. I just think it's a great reel. Wish they'd do the 12 too.

The weight of your outfit matters when fishing long hours. Put this reel on a matching, fairly stiff graphite rod and you're in business.

I still like the Torium 16 for toggin' and heavy sea bassin' ~ The '14' is just right for our flounder/cbass fishing though.

I have high hopes for big news on the Artificial Reef front next week. Time'll tell.

We're in a period of low abundance for sea bass right now. A strong argument could be made that artificial reef has helped ease that pain. Sure would like to see our 'footprint' of reef double. Might do just that!
At some point in time we'll see fisheries management begin to look for ways to positively influence juvenile survival outside an estuary. Right now marine management effort is devoted to issues such as allocation, (who gets what percent) and satisfying court ordered reductions.

The last sea bass population expansion was well underway before the first size limit was put in place. Understanding why that happened would put us on our way to restoring the species. Probably a lot of 'em...

The whole of our marine system's complexity is as unfathomable as astronomy's where/what our 'expanding universe' is expanding into. Headache just contemplating it.

Life stages of fish and what effects their survival is a whole lot less complex!

We'll sort it out.

Ought to ~ would have been a lovely day for seatrout fishing.

Regards,

Monty

Capt. Monty Hawkins
mhawkins@siteone.net
Party Boat "Morning Star"
Reservations 410 520 2076
www.morningstarfishing.com

posted by Monty # Sunday, October 14, 2007

Fish Report 10/7/07

Good news below signature

Hi All,

Dogoned easterly winds keep pushing more warm water in. The water temp was 75 degrees outside the inlet and 73 degrees 20 miles out today.
That's great news if you like swimming and surfing. Hasn't been very helpful to the fishers!

It'll change. Maybe slowly over time or all-at-once-in-a-big-blow, but, sure as the leaves are going to fall, the water temps are going to drop.

I suppose what's going on is that we are 'stuck' in August. Traditionally, that's the hardest month for bottom fishing. Everything out there seems just like the difficult late summer period. Save the calendar of course.

Had a light rail during the week. Monday and Tuesday we had excellent flounder fishing with some bonus sea bass and croakers thrown in. The rest of the week was eh-OK for flounder, up and down for croaker and a few shots of sea bass. Though I think most scratched a dinner out of it, Sunday was tough. The sorta tough that makes "Boat for Sale" signs go up in marinas.

No, not mine.

Many years ago I read Winston Churchill's multi-volume history of WWII. When he spoke of 'darkest before the dawn' it was a whole lot darker than an off fishing season!

The water will cool -just a little- and the fishing will get better.

Maybe tomorrow.

Perhaps the silver lining might be that difficult times bring about management changes. We need to ensure that industrial overwinter trawl effort doesn't unduly impact stocks of fish from a particular area. We need to learn what might be done to actively improve spawning success of the fish under management. We still need to find out if there's really any coral out there. We don't even have any fisheries work indicating that sea bass survive when released. On and on...

There was a black sea bass tagging study awhile back from Massachusetts to at least Virginia. What, 60,000 tags? It was a lot! We had a day on the O.C. Princess -that big, beautiful Lydia at Shantytown- when we tagged 1,150 sea bass in a day. After the biologists threw down their clip boards in surrender; those aboard who wanted some for dinner still caught what they wanted!

That's more sea bass than I've seen in the last two weeks.

Where's the study? There's been plenty of time. All those thousands and thousands of tags and not a peep.

Publish or perish? Maybe sometimes it's- if you publish you perish.

Derned if I know. Hope nobody's sitting on it.

Need the data and then put it to work in management.

Lots of work to do out there.

The good kind soon as the water temp breaks.

Regards,

Monty

Capt. Monty Hawkins
mhawkins@siteone.net
Party Boat "Morning Star"
Reservations 410 520 2076
www.morningstarfishing.com

This space intentionally left blank!

posted by Monty # Sunday, October 07, 2007

Morning Star Fish Report

Fish Report 10/28/07

Fish Report 10/21/07

Fish Report 10/14/07

Fish Report 10/7/07

Archives