Morning Star Fishing

09/05/2026

Sea bass, flounder & mahi? Yes! But nothing easy about it.. 9/5/26

Wasn't a stellar sunrise, but the forecast was spot on. Today's light NE breeze reminiscent of New England; we sure didn't miss yesterday morning's mini butt-kicking in W 20+ one bit.
Lindsey and John sent today's blocks down atop a barge where they'll add excellent complexity to its flat deck. Fish already use it - we'll make room for more. In time the additional rugosity should help corals to gain a toehold. I'm expecting complete coverage by 2035.. (Not sure I'll see it though!)
That's the brass ring. When a reef is fully colonized by our temperate corals, that's the best we can offer. Future generations will see a lot more coral than we did - especially if oyster restoration is accelerated and ocean water made blue again.
Where I thought sure our corals were zooxanthellae driven (as in tropical regions where single celled algae cohabitat with many corals and turn sunlight into food.) Because I only see our corals where sunlight can strike, and because an upper NOAA habitat guy told me of sea whip in Australia that was discovered to have zoox; I thought sure our corals were symbiotically feeding on sunlight too.
But no. I had asked divers Nick and Travis to bring me up some sea whip samples to find out for good. Professor Noah Bressman put them under a microscope and found no zooxanthellae.
I couldn't fathom why then the sunlight limitation. I am still not positive, but I think sea whip has contracted inshore from where it flourished fifty years ago..
Professor Noah explained while they don't convert sunlight to food, their food web does need sunlight to thrive. I've boiled it down thusly - phytoplankton (microscopic plants/algae) need sunlight - zooplankton (microscopic/really small animals or even large marine fish etc but in earliest life stages) feed on phytoplankton - sea whip (our orange and sometimes purple soft coral that can resemble a grass-like meadow in large numbers) feed on zooplankton. Because sunlight drives the food web most needed, sea whip are found where there's light.
Is that all of it?
Probably not. Just what I have now..

With blocks long since by the stern rail, quite some time later we began fishing.
Though my anglers dropped into sea bass straight out of the gate; wasn't much to it save crickets.
Hmmm..
Just a while later nothing had changed so far as wind, water quality or current - yet somehow the pace of catching grew.
Folks getting used to the equipment and bite?
I suppose..
A small school of mahi found us and, to their misfortune, mistook the boat for a safe place to congregate. Mahi on a sea bass/fluke trip works.
The current came all the way around south before midday. For a few hours it turned into one of my toughest bites this year.except for young Mr Gavin who continued catching when no one else was. He landed three doubles of sea bass when there wasn't that many around the rest of the rail. We tried to cipher it - why his rig and no others? Sometimes the fishing is unknowable.
Thankfully the bite came around our favor again later - a little at least. Though I stayed into overtime, it didn't help everyone--certainly helped some.

Mahi trips Tues & Wed coming. Looks like we'll sneak them in before the wind - a wind that might churn the water column and lower the surface temp sending mahi scrambling offshore.
We'll see!

My new deckhand (and pure fishing machine) David (Cornflower to his many friends) needs to take time off to help his Dad while he has heart surgery soon.
I need another hand!
Email only at [email protected]
Cheers,
Monty

09/04/2026

Well Sakes,
I apologize for the redundancy--the sameness of so many reports beginning in similar fashion--but the weatherman and I really are having issues. Where "West at 5 to 10 with gusts to 15 in the morning" should have been a nice summer day - quite nearly the physical rendering of a poet's 'summer zephyrs playing lightly upon the sea' ..what we found was not that. West at 20 with gusts to 25 would have been a more realistic representation of the morning's winds.
It was not nice.
Even as Rich & Bob dropped reef blocks to their new forever homes (awwww) and again blocks were deployed in spread out 4 packs; I wondered if we had a day worth fishing - if it would even be safe to fish.
By 9:15 I'd seen three sensible private boat skippers headed west - throwing in the towel owing a bad forecast. Some seas were coming in 3s with the larger nearly 4ft. Come 9:45 though we caught a break when the wind shifted a touch north. Now WxN as opposed to WxS; just beginning to build into uncomfortable, those more boisterous seas lost energy. A new wave pattern (set) was begun while knocking down the first.
Helped - but, like the 19 foot outboard skipper I saw headed for home at 10:15, I'd have much preferred if W at 5 to 10 had been correct.
Then, come 11am, it was correct. The ocean calmed quickly.
Absolutely calm on the ride in.
Fishwise?
Just a grind. Set up on a huge bit of broken reef where Joe and new-guy, Hunter, could work us back a good ways. There's a reason I have nearly a half mile of anchor line to port. Only used 2/10s of a mile though. Once the wind laid down we pulled anchor & did not reset it.
With sea bass at times plenty thick on screen, fluke were the star of the show. It does amaze me we can have 13 inch flounder even 30 miles out. Lots of throwbacks per keeper - Chris's jumbo fluke came at 12:15 and won the tshirt. He caught the second largest too. Rich limited out when he landed a double keeper.
Amaryllis, now two years running, took the sea bass pool - again - though Tim, always experimenting for the secret slayer rig, did come a close second.
Be mahi fishing next two weeks on Tuesdays & Wednesdays - sea bass/fluke reef fishing the rest of the week save Mondays.
After Sept 16th - all reef fishing til after Christmas.
Cheers,
Monty

09/03/2026

Mahi 9/3/26

Bit of confusion at the weather department this morning. Our wind speed, thankfully, was correct at five to ten; wind's forecasted direction was about 180 degrees off though - South was North.
At such low speed it wasn't an issue, only a curiosity .early on anyway.
By 10:30 the wind had come SE - then S - then WSW and making the ocean's surface dusty at near twenty knots by noon & at last a hard W by 1:30. Switching around too much to build a set - just whitecaps and a chop....

Having seen sea bass on my sounders using just two blocks bound together of late, we tried a new four block unit today. Steve, Mark, Kevin & John sent 4 smaller units overboard instead of one larger one.
When I think about some of the natural hardbottom reef I've filmed since 2000 - bottom with scarcely more than pebbles and growth; I see no reason a large collection of four-block reef units shouldn't work wonderfully.
Capt Bob Gowar's Memorial Reef is nearing 6,000 blocks - mostly in 16+ block units. A hundred small units would only be 400 blocks. Three times that won't be hard. Won't take long. Likely know by October if it works.

Mahi fishing today was a struggle. Water temp was 80+ degrees & a nice, clear, clean-green at that. Perfect. I've no idea why they didn't chew. Just when it seemed it was game on - they became scarce again. Was fortunate my anglers each had at least one. Mark's pool winner came at the second to the last stop & was hooked within seconds of 'Lines in - In they go!' He must have dropped his bait right on its head.
Flounder and sea bass fishing Friday & Saturday. Hope the current pipes down. Been ripping good yesterday & today. Rather not fish 16 ounces!

Cheers,
Monty

09/02/2026

09/02/2026

OK Mahi Fishing - 9/2/26

The Fishing Center's giant Shantytown flag stood a bit starched this AM. Supposed to be 5 to 10 NE - wasn't comforting to see all the stars & stripes. Less than an hour earlier, however, the flag had lain against its staff. Certainly a young wind - any sea condition would not have had time to mature..
A light chop it was too, at least for a while. After John, Larry & Don sent today's reef unit by the stern rail; we continued east.
As in recent mahi trips, we got the skunk off straight away. Wasn't an indicator of things to come though. Nick one, nick two, draw a blank and then another; stop after stop we worked on making a catch.
Where yesterday the change in current sealed our fate, today it changed our luck for the better.
Nice when it happens. Net a mahi, swing a few aboard; comes nine one drift, catch seven, eight more - adds up faster for sure.
All day winds had abandoned the 5 to 10 part of the forecast. With not quite well-defined streaks on the sea's surface, I expect it was a bit less than 20 NE. Though that's enough to get somewhat nautical, wind and current together kept seas from building much height, but fishing drifts were swift.
By noon thirty I had fish up and down the rail save one guy with clean ice - and he'd absolutely saved my bacon many times over the years with his unparalleled electronics knowledge. Just wouldn't do. Never mind he had a boat mahi rig (what everyone else was using!) on a perfectly fine spinning rod, I had mate Joe rig him up with one of my sticks from the wheelhouse overhead rack.
Next drop?
Dinner.
Caught every stop thereafter too.
Who could guess where luck comes from.
Come the close of fishing winds decided 5 to 10 would be just fine. Conditions that had been nearing boisterous mellowed at once giving us a fine ride home.
Bob won the pool, reef raffle & tied for high hook with Bill (who has donated hundreds of tshirts to OCRF!)

Didn't make any new friends at NOAA Fisheries yesterday with my catch estimate rant. Not one bit of it was made up or exaggerated though. I had used the same estimates to illuminate their new data's failings as I had with two to four previous versions. Bad data makes regulatory outcomes far less predictable and sure to be unfair.
We've squandered two decades and bankrupted many fishing businesses using catch data that should never have been presented to regulators. Recreational catch needs to be brought from impossibly high down to sea level. Data the ForHire fleet turns in for every trip needs to be used to truth MRIP's statistical imaginings. If ForHire skippers think Private Boats catch about half the total at sea landings, but MRIP's estimate has ForHire catching just 3% of that state's rec fish - there needs to be a flare, a warning to regulators that this accusation of gross recreational overfishing is quite likely a statistical flyer...
Every regulatory tightening, closure, and a few regulatory loosenings too have traced to wild swings in catch statistics.
There's real work that needs done in fisheries. Make believe boogeyman "overfishing" of private boats is not where regulators' attention should be focused.
To turn the ocean blue and fill it with fish again will require sound catch data and one heck of a lot of oysters..
Cheers,
Monty

09/01/2026

Nicer Mahi (if not as many as mid-August)
A Long Catch Estimate Rant
9/1/26

Light rail, calm sea, Chamber of Commerce sunrise; was a fine start to the day. While a few miles from Dave Hammond's Memorial Reef I saw the Tiki XIV on the near-horizon . He was there to sweeten Dave's Reef with block donated by York Building Products (& there's a tug soon to follow I hope!) We paused a moment to make our daily drop of 16 jumbo blocks in a unit & watch Capt Stormy deploy their first drop of 132 blocks (x4 for a total). We were both spot on; and, both drops may well have squished a few sea bass. (Well, I marked mad fish on Dave's and also on the new reef with just 232 blocks. I suspect sea bass hear those blocks falling as you'd hear a train. They'd sure better get out of the way!)
Got the skunk off the boat first drop with a bailer mahi. Pull a few, goose egg, pull a few more, goose egg, Don put a nice one in the box - biggest this season I expect - just how it went. Had to sort em out spot by spot. Tried hard to finish the day with a bang - left early, in late: but when the current slacked, the bite fizzled.
Still, a decent day of mahi fishing I think.
Plenty of room next two days too. Friday for fluke too.

Yesterday NOAA announced new catch estimates - updating MRIP. I worked with lead scientists and statisticians for about 2 years on the update. (Have always worked with em..)
Sadly, the result was like everything else in recreational catch estimates since the Party/Charter correction of 2003 - wrong.
And Now A Brief Synopsis Of 28 Years Of Work - that, on Facebook, amounts to a long rant..

Where Maryland Shore (& I do mean from Shore Only) had 178,000 lbs of sea bass in Sept/Oct 2016 in MRIP after two 'recalibrations' -- now under the "new & improved" estimates it's 182,000 pounds.
Sea Bass From Maryland's Shore.
Oh, they all weighed over a pound too.
Be a neat trick.
When the estimate came out I was watching close. We get closed or at least more tightly regulated when catch estimates show us catching too many cbass. I've tried to help fix it since 1998. While there was a victory of sorts in Party/Charter estimates in 2003, since then our estimates have grown incredibly worse.
Awful really.
After this 'Shore Only' estimate a bunch of us turned the internet upside down back then and found one angler who claimed to have caught a legal sea bass from Shore at the inlet pier.
Gosh.
Had Shore anglers actually caught the equal of 3+ years of all MD Party/Charter landings? ...I suspect I'd have had a time selling fares to go catch far fewer offshore.
Don't have to be a die hard angler to know that's a bunch of codswallop. MD shore hasn't caught a hundred pounds all together since the size limit went to 10 inches in 1998.
Yup.
MRIP was fixed alright.
Maybe "Fixed to make it look like recreational anglers are burning through and beyond quota while scientists use nonexistent catch to boost population assessments"? The bigger the population, the larger ours & commercial quotas get. You can bet commercial quota doesn't dissipate in a cloud of electrons though. Theirs is never ghost catch. If legal, those fish get landed.
I've only checked a couple estimates in the new system - a few of the exact ones I've used for years. Another new estimate was down an amazing 500K lbs. That might seem good - sound good ..until you get Paul Harvey's "Rest of the Story"..
In 2010/2011 I was frequently using a NJ Shore Tautog estimate from 2010 to illustrate how bad MRFSS (NOAA's original statistical estimating program) data was. It showed NJ's Shore anglers landing 73,000 tautog in March/April 2010. Experts in NJ doubted anyone had caught shore tautog - maybe 100 pounds in the end of the period. So mayyyyybeee 300lbs of tog/blackfish.
Then MRIP comes out in 2012 - three years late but, trust me, NOAA wasn't counting. We had permitted "accountability measures" - this where going over quota would be 'paid back' in the following year with an equal reduction in new quota. Now, being as this new super accurate estimating system, MRIP, based on saltwater licensing numbers was to be up and running by 2009, folks agreed to the accountability measures..
But, as noted, MRIP didn't come out in 09. Was 2012. NOAA bludgeoned us with accountability measures sans new data anyway.
And we were pummeled by MRFSS catch estimates. A six month 'emergency' sea bass closure very nearly cost me my boat.
Very, very nearly.
Oh, and when those "New & Improved" estimates did come out? MRIP had those poor fellows freezing their you-know-whats off along NJ's jetties and bridges in March/April as no longer catching an impossible 73,000 tautog.
Oh No - now it was 174,000 tautog.
Some repair..
Then came two MRIP "recalibrations" where our catch numbers shot to the moon.
Those merciless slayers of untold tautog along New Jersey's coast were now Confirmed (there is no backing off a catch estimate. Whatever the centerpoint? That's what those recreational anglers caught) ..NJ's late winter Shore anglers were Confirmed to have caught 341,441 tautog which was then calculated to over 800,000 pounds.
And the experts thought maybe, just maybe, 300 pounds.
So, shall I offer kudos to this new RAPID system of estimating recreational catch? After all, they did drop the NJ Shore Tautog estimate by 500K lbs.
At 300,000 lbs it's only Three Orders Of Magnitude Too High.
Yay?

Bad recreational catch data has bankrupted many in the ForHire fisheries - especially in NY where the data seems worst. One Private Boat sea bass estimate had NY's Boston Whalers and Grady Whites catching more cbass in Nov/Dec 2016 than All Commercial Trawl/Trap from Hatteras to Cape Cod caught All Year..
Seem likely?
MRIP wrote and said there were no errors in their calculations.

In 2018 recreational catch of Private Boat & Shore landings for flounder and sea bass were now suddenly said to be so large that scientific population assessments were thought too low. With these now much higher levels of Private Boat & Shore catch, there wouldn't have been enough flounder or cbass to support MRIP's estimates had there not been a lot higher fluke and sea bass populations than thought. Stock assessments now raised - Commercial summer flounder quota increased 49% & their sea bass quita increased 69%.. This while recreational fishers saw no loosening of regulation at all because we were already catching too many .according to MRIP.

Our allowable landings disappear as ghost catch on a computer screen while commercial landings factually hit the dock.
What could go wrong?

Making fun of estimates no one believed didn't 'prove' them wrong so I worked out "Percentage of the Catch" too.
Consider - All Party/Charter & All Commercial tautog catch for the entirety of 2010 (ALL Professional Catch!) equaled 627,302 lbs -- that's 180,210 lbs less than MRIP had NJ Shore anglers landing in March & April 2010 - so in two months (when they're not biting) NJ Shore showed as catching an enormous percentage of total tautog.
I spent months on it.
In 2013, for instance, All Party/Charter from Hatteras to Cape Cod landed just 4% of the total recreational black sea bass landings.
Hmmm..
Often times a single state's Private Boats would have more than 95% of their sea bass landings.
I interviewed many ForHire skippers up and down the coast. No one thought Party/Charter caught such a low percentage. In MD I'd question Private Boat catching even above 25% of ForHire's landings.

Did I mention Party/Charter has had to report sea bass/summer flounder (well, everything we catch I think) since 1997?
Some great data and it's spot on too - especially compared to MRIP.
Do you think Fishery Managers use that data.
Not as catch they don't.
They say they use it calculate 'effort' though.. If so, I cannot tell it.
What a mess.

You cannot push with a string. I was never able to conclusively "Prove" an estimate was too high. Might not have been a living soul who believed it; but, to NOAA's Regional Administrators? "Why Sure! It Could have happened!"
Whatever number was on screen? That's what we caught. .

Then the MAFMC put up a video camera in the Ocean City Inlet to count 'ocean effort' of Private Boats.
In July/Aug 2020 (wave 4) MRIP's total effort estimate for all ocean-only Private Boat effort in MD is 185,341 angler trips. Divide by 4 per boat and again by 60 days and you'll see 772 Private Boat trips a day leaving Ocean City MD's inlet. (Oyyyy.. Nonsense! Even the White Marlin Open would have just over 300 boats if they all went, and that's the biggest billfish tournament in the world!) So: MRIP has 772 boats a day..
Video boat count for the same period is 37,500 angler trips during the two month wave or 156 boats per day if using the same parameters of 4 anglers per boat and 60 days. That's 616 less boats & 2,464 fewer anglers per day.
Per Day!
That, all by itself, is plenty to skew catch estimates incredibly off track.
How about with the two day old "New & Improved" RAPID system?
That same high-summer period now shows 45,611 fewer angler trips at 139,730 total.
Bring it down with the same formula and you have 528 boats leaving OC inlet per day with 4 anglers each.but video recorded 156 boats per day. (And I think that's too high. We were not allowed to count them!)

You'd think such a statistically valid method of calculating recreational effort would be highly desirable.
Yeah, No.
Nope.
They won't use the data we send in every trip either.
Though jumping commercial quotas up 49 & 69% is mighty smelly; if "It's a Conspiracy" then there's an awful lot of folks that have been involved over the years.
I haven't any idea why NOAA is resistant to checking crucial data, but I could lose all my permits and even get locked up for falsely reporting catch.

I thought we had a chance this time.
Cheers,
Monty

[email protected]

08/30/2026

Sea Bass, Fluke and one stray Mahi - 8/30/26

Witnessed another crisp summer sunrise this am. Right photogenic really. Had cancelled yesterday for NE winds at 20. Though the fellows had some outstanding billfishing off in the deep Saturday, the NOAA weather buoy 15 miles offshore of the MD/DE line (Buoy 44009 - pops up in a search) showed I made a good call. Would not have been fun bottom fishing on my boat. Having Sunday wide open, I moved those clients who could to Sunday and found perfect weather for bottom fishing.
Luke and Gage made today's reef block drop--but not before I'd done a sidescan east and WNW on the reef. That showed me where I will need to deploy reef units in order to stitch the whole reef group together.
And it is coming together.
Nicely.
After blocks?
East.
Fishing wasn't red hot. Was sure enough to hold anglers' attention though. Several fluke over 24in plus a dozen 'no measurement needed' sea bass in the first 40 minutes held everyone to the rail.
Joe & Keith both had 3 seriously nice flounder apiece with Joe winning today's tshirt. I should think everyone caught em.
One guy only fished part of two drifts and caught two fine keeper flounder.
I expect Shelly will be glad to have fresh fluke.
Andrew took the pool money for biggest sea bass & Joe was high hook in double digits.

Had a couple wire bottom rigs along the rail today - unusual. Those anglers weren't keeping up. I had David switch em to boat rigs. With the water near 80 and super clear up top - a 'clean green' even - anglers needed their best rig this day. Using a wire bottom rig on my boat seems to me like having US Marines come ashore against hostiles with 1903 Springfield bolt action rifles.
I know those rigs will catch some days. A Springfield works too.
Just NoNoNo...
We'll rig you up.
If you want to book September trips I'll be posting a Fish Report soon.
See also Reef Reports on FB. Capt Stormy has been getting it done. Lots & Lots of Blocks!
Cheers,
Monty

08/28/2026

Some forecast this day. Nary a breath of air over 5 knots and the least bit of light drizzle? I'll take it.
Forecast was spot on too -- well, until it rained on the way in, but you'll have that.
Lisa & Eva did the honors on today's block drop; sent it down into great position at Ringmaster's Reef too.
Always further east, we ambled on off a right good way afterward.
When I slowed to map my first fishing spot I saw great screens of sea bass mounded up. Got into position - then lines in - was fully expecting doubles of decent cbass.
Instead? Rail was so quiet even the crickets didn't chirp.
Whhhaaaattt...
By and by come a flounder, another, a cbass at last - Hmmmm....
Dogonit.
Bunch of great clients aboard with sea bass fussy as all gitout.
Ah well. Slow cbass bite better than no bite. Fluke sure put on a show for some. Nothing to do but fish.
By 10:15 Gary was one shy a fluke limit. Nice when it happens. He limited at 11:32. Took the tshirt for largest flounder also.
Saw some pretty cbass come over the rail - not in numbers I'd envisioned, but they collected into nice dinners anyway. Vinny boated the pool winner.
Also saw an unusual number of double throwback flounder with most keepers coming as singles it seemed.
Did have one mahi take a flounder bait but no others.
Sea Bass Bob boxed out on fluke too at 12:45.
By day's end most everyone had dinner-plus in their coolers. .

Cheers All,
Monty