Fish Report 5/2/15
Going Toggin!!
Iron Lady Departs
A Sample..
Inshore Tog Trips:
Monday, May 4th, 2015 & Wednesday, May 5th - 7am to 3pm - $110.00 - 12 Sells Out.
Also Saturday & Sunday, May 9th & 10th (Mother’s Day) - 6:30 to 3:30 - $125.00 - 12 Sells Out.
Some sort of bait provided! Shrimp? Hunting crabs now.. Have some - will find more!
Not Swinging For The Fence - Inshore Toggin.
Sea bass reservations being taken - see 8 paragraphs down.
Skunks are always possible while tog fishing.
Really. It's a frequent occurrence, even with a good bite. Not an easy fishery; the very best toggers sometimes get their head handed to them despite folks all around having done well.
Then too, sometimes the whole boat can do very poorly.
If you can't take the heat, and there ain't much of that either, stay out of the kitchen.
But If That Sounds Like Your Kind Of Fishing, Good! Cause We're Going Toggin Anyway! Tog Only, Sea Bass Closed.
Reservations Required for All Trips.
Reservations at 410 - 520 - 2076 — They Answer 24/7.
LEAVE YOUR BEST POSSIBLE CONTACT NUMBER - Weather Cancelations Are Common - I Make Every Attempt To Let Clients Sleep In If The Weather's Not Going Our Way..
We provide green crabs (or shrimp if all else fails!) You're welcome to bring any kind of crab you like – even lobster, even plastic.
If You Book — BE SURE TO LEAVE A GOOD CONTACT NUMBER & DON'T TURN YOUR PHONE OFF!
No Live Tog Leave The Boat - Dead & Bled - Period. (I Believe The Live Tog Black Market Has Hurt This Fishery ..But Nowhere Near As Much As Bad Sea Bass Regulations)
Agreed With Or Not, All Regulations Observed – Maryland: 4 Tog @ 16 Inches – Sea Bass Closed On Jan 1st Because Of Rotten MRIP Catch Estimates.
If You Won't Measure & Count Your Fish The State Will Provide A Man With A Gun To Do It For You. We Measure & Count — ALWAYS — No Exceptions!
Dramamine Is Cheap Insurance! Crystalized Ginger Works Great Too. It's Simple To Prevent Motion Sickness, Difficult To Cure.
Bring A (not terribly big) Fish Cooler With ICE For Your Party.. A 48 QT Cooler Is Good For 2 Guys. Even Now You Should ICE Fresh Fish..
Be A Half Hour Early - We Like To Leave Early.
Clients Arriving Late Will See The West End Of An East Bound Boat..
Now opening June to sea bass reservations under standard reservation policy.
Opened Reservations For First Two Weeks Of Sea Bass Season Back In February. Long Cbass Trips - 6AM to 3:30PM - $125.00 - All Saturdays Plus The First 3 Days Of Season Are Long Trips. Regular Trips $110.00..
New 2015 OCRF Reef Raffle for a bronze Turner Sculpture of a pair of spadefish. About 16 inches high, it's an awesome piece. Maybe I'll keep it in my office this summer for safe-keeping..
Nearly $3,000.00 value, only $10.00 a ticket! Turner's work is, quite literally, around the world. It's true sculpture.. http://www.turnersculpture.com
Send an email w/your address and I'll snail-mail you some tickets. Just return the stubs & money. We'll pull a winner Thanksgiving week.
Small-scall reef building that adds up over time; on my last fishing trip (March 25th - Ugh!) we dropped reef-block number 11,000 - now 11,018 Reef Blocks by the stern-rail – 2,146 at Doug Ake's – 1,218 at Saint Ann's – 558 at Eagle Scout Reef - 557 at Lindsey's Isle of Wight Reef and 322 at the Brian Sauerzopf Memorial Reef.
See ocreefs.org if you're interested in learning more.
Our annual reef dinner is being hosted again by the Ocean City Marlin Club on May 17th from 4:30 to 7.. They specialize in delicious. If you have items to contribute for any manner of live/silent/Chinese auction, please shoot me an email.
Greetings All,
Finished the Iron Lady project up with 14 deployments. Trust me when I tell you we have changed Ocean City’s inshore reef fishing for the better - permanently.
Won’t be this year or next, but over time all those new reefs will begin to reach their full production..
Meanwhile, we’ll have built more!
I’m especially proud of Sue Foster’s "Drifting Easy Reef” & Capt Bob Gowar’s Reef. Bobby’s, in fact, may well be among the best tog habitats ever built. See if you can picture about 50 of these in a jumbled pile..
Years ago I had a video camera on the bottom (but my 99 dollar VCR wasn’t recording!) when we saw the support bracing of a barge’s stern section opened up as though a giant bookcase with three rows of cubicles. Every nook had a large tog.
We also saw a belly-tagged sea bass from the 2002 federal program plain as day on the monitor ..but weren’t recording.
Still, it was the greatest concentration of large tog I’ve ever seen. Perhaps at Bobby’s we will have mimicked that accidental reef in grand style.
Our reef building’s just begun. We have much to do to turn the ocean blue..
Below you’ll see a sample of my week to week lobbying. Day to day lobbying I suppose.
Looking forward to a fresh fish dinner.
Going Fishing!
Regards,
Monty
Capt. Monty Hawkins
*******
Greetings Men,
Asking pipe manufacturers for a quote on assembling units. Will make Tangier Reef a case study..
Going to need oysters to attach inside the pipes. MARI can fund some construction - enough to demo the idea anyway - IF I can coerce the committee’s support.
Blue Ocean..
Cheers,
Monty
...
I’m trying to get the State & large environmental groups interested in building an experimental ‘hollow reef’. This involves cabling pipe together like this -
The idea is to drop a LOT of these pipe bundles, stacking them up to even within a few feet of legal vertical clearance at a reef, as much as 17 feet high at Tangier Reef, & then top-shoting the area with small boulder..
The difference, biologically, between a hollow reef and a solid reef would be fantastic.
I am, in fact, looking for a price per 6 piece unit. (not including trucking) It’s an opportunity to take a liability & create a slim profit instead..
Any cable - used cable - is fine so long as a unit can be picked up. Stainless strapping? We built 6 units by putting 5 pipes together & then lifting the top 2 while adding another piece to the center. They went overboard perfectly..
I’ll also be asking reef deployment contractors for a price on assembling the units, and even be looking into a contractor to specifically -and only- build units..
Thanks For Your Thoughts,
Monty
Capt. Monty Hawkins
President, O.C. Reef Foundation
PO Box 1072,
Ocean City, MD 21842
