Fish Report 10/20/22
Opening a bunch of trips..
Ocean City Reef Foundation 2022 Reef Raffle Begins!
Been working the bugs out of a 6 piston engine rebuild. About have it now. She's ready for duty - I'm sure.
Opening through Saturday 10/29/22 - All Long Trips!
IF YOU BOOK, LEAVE YOUR BEST POSSIBLE CONTACT NUMBER & LISTEN TO YOUR MESSAGES!
Anna might be slammed when I hit send. If she cannot pick up, Leave her a message. She has a method to her madness.. Reservations at 443-235-5577 - She's a one person operation & has other jobs too. The line closes at 8pm and reopens at 8am. (If you want to get on Friday 10/21 e-mail me until 9:30 or so. There's about zero chance I'll sell out tomorrow!)
Weather Cancellations Happen - I Make Every Attempt To Let Clients Sleep In If The Weather's Not Going Our Way.
Fishing for Sea Bass Fri/Sat - 10/21 & 22 - Trips are sold out at just 18 passengers - Friday 10/21 from 6:30am (6!) to 4pm @ $175.00.. - Saturday 10/22/22 from 6am (5:30!) to 5pm @ $200.00..
Lay in Sun/Mon then fish Tues thru Friday 10/25 to 10/28 from 6:30 to 4 at $175.00 and Saturday 10/29 from 6 to 5 at $200.00..
18 sells out. Bait, rigs, & Gulp provided as desired.
If fishing the stern waterproof boots advised in fall & winter.
*Be a half hour early! We always leave early
..except when someone shows up right on time.
Clients arriving late will see the west end of an east-bound boat. Seriously, with a limited number of reserved spots, I do not refund because you overslept or had a flat.. If you're reserved and the last person we're waiting on - you'll need to answer your phone. I will not make on time clients wait past scheduled departure because of a misfortune on your part.
Try to always leave a half hour early (and never an hour early!) I rarely get in on time either. If you have a worrier at home, please advise them I often come home late. It's what I do.
Trips Also Sometimes Announced on Facebook at Morning Star Fishing
https://www.facebook.com/ocfishing/
I post after action reports (or lack thereof) (and sometimes detailed thoughts on fisheries issues) for every trip on my personal FB page and Morning Star page..
Bait is provided on all trips. Gulp too.
No Galley. Bring Your Own Food & Beverage.
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!
It's Simple To Prevent Motion Sickness, Difficult To Cure. Bonine seems best because it's non-drowsy. Truly cheap & effective insurance.
Honestly - If you get to go on the ocean once a month, once a year or even less; why risk chumming all day? Similarly, if you howl at the moon all night, chances are good you'll howl into a bucket all day.
Bring A Cooler With Ice For Your Fish – A 48 Quart Cooler Is Fine For A Few People. Do Not Bring A Very Large Cooler. We have a few loaners - you'll still need ice. Should you catch some monstrous fish, we'll be able to ice it.
No Galley! Bring Food & Beverages To Suit. A few beers in cans is fine for the ride home.
Wishbone doesn't replace backbone.. Have to keep a shoulder into reef building to make it happen.
Donations help too!Ocreefs.org
As of 10/13/22 we have 38,280 Reef Blocks & 544 Reef Pyramids (170lb ea or an equivalent) deployed at numerous ACE permitted ocean reef sites - there are also 786 pyramids deployed by MD CCA at Chesapeake Bay oyster sites working to restore blue ocean water… (and, boy are those pyramid numbers about to rise!)
Currently being targeted oceanside: at the Brand New Rambler Reef 240 Reef Blocks & 10 Pyramids - Tyler Long's Memorial Reef 488 (+17 Reef Pyramids) Virginia Lee Hawkins Memorial Reef 406 Reef Blocks (+71 Reef Pyramids) - Capt. Jack Kaeufer's/Lucas Alexander's Reefs 1,948 Blocks (+46 Reef Pyramids) - Doug Ake's Reef 4,174 blocks (+16 Reef Pyramids) - St. Ann's 2,847 (+14 Reef Pyramids) - Sue's Block Drop 1,642 (+24 Reef Pyramids) - TwoTanks Reef 1,303 (+ 15 Reef Pyramids) - Capt. Bob's Inshore Block Drop 912 - Benelli Reef 1,552 (+ 118 Pyramids) - Capt. Bob's Bass Grounds Reef 4,071 (+ 88 reef pyramids) - Wolf & Daughters Reef 734 - Dr. Al Berger's Reef 1,485 (+33 Reef Pyramids) - Great Eastern Block Drop 1,528 (+25 Reef Pyramids) - Two more brand New Drops Begun at Cristina's Blast 60 Reef Blocks & 2 Pyramids - Unnamed Site South Side GEBD 120 Reef Blocks & 2 Pyramids - Capt Greg Hall's Memorial Reef 222 Blocks & 2 Pyramids — And 325 Castle & Terracotta Tog Blocks & 10 Pyramids 81 feet Bass Grounds Unnamed ..
Greetings All!!
It certainly seems NOAA still abides the old Darwinian division of 'reef building' vs 'non reef building' corals — ours, so help me, are non reef building (eg, will not create land! (Nevermind what fish think!)
Seriously, in Darwin's time "plate tectonics" were not understood. I own a book by C Darwin himself on coral reefs - the word "fish" is nowhere found. Not once. They took reef and marine fossils on mountaintops to mean 'reefs created land'..
Darwin's reef legacy? Temperate reefs are not terribly important.
Perhaps not even a little important above Cape Hatteras. Not that I've seen. At least the Army Corps of Engineers (ACE) allows us permits to build reef.
How in blazes 'non reef building corals' managed to remain a class in our era of striving to understand ecosystems and what might disrupt them I couldn't guess.
Promise, every patch of temperate reef; whether a remnant of our natural reefs, a shipwreck, or one of our artificial constructions, has fish, growths, and crustaceans not found on sand stretching forever and the few patches of muddy seafloor we have.
Though they may never have formed an island, nor especially a mountaintop, since the earth's oceans have had fish, many of those species have called some manner of reef "Home."
Maryland has rejected artificial reef construction since at least 1920 & maybe since the Civil War. We have managed a few constructions though. The fellows at CCA MD built a reef in MD's southern-most Chesapeake waters in 2017 using huge pieces of cement pipe. Now any good oysterman or restorationist will tell you concrete won't work in the Bay. Have to have shell, they'll say.
Dern sure those pieces of miscast pipe placed in 2017 are covered in oysters though.. All by naturally struck spat too.
Hmmm..
It's really important to put the myth "cement won't work" to bed. It's baloney. Always has been.
I see potential for huge biofilter reefs with no need whatever of 'sanctuary' status. Hand tonging and power-driven patent tonging can work the tops of these reef units forever & still leave plenty on the interior to do the ecological work we need done for fisheries and estuarine/marine water quality restorations. With many, many oyster projects underway, plus the sanctuary sites already in place beginning to thrive and throw off spat in grand quantity, I see oystering becoming a stable fishery again - so long as licenses are limited & catch managed.
And while we'll certainly benefit from the labors of estuarine oyster restorationists in our now-green mid-Atlantic becoming blue again, the work the ocean city reef foundation does is in the ocean - we deploy substrates for temperate corals.
There is no state reef program. Reefs we build are funded through private donations..
Bake sale funding, if you will.
This raffle is vital to what we'll build in the coming winter.
Lots of projects! The bigger our funding, the bigger our reefs!
Ocean City Reef Foundation Raffle Announcement 10/20/22
And we're off! Though a late start for our annual reef raffle, our number one fundraiser in the covid era, I'm confident the array of prizes and steady reef building progress being made offshore will have sponsors pitching in.
Three of our four Grand Prizes will be drawn New Year's Day 2023 by my eight year old friend, Lilly. As we have the last few years we'll also have drawings of jewelry, an igloo super-cooler, plus a fantastic array of rods - at least one prize every Sunday.
We also have a new Savage rifle I thought best to raffle before Thanksgiving, just prior MD's venison season.
Great Mercy!
We have much to give away! The sooner you contribute, the more drawings you'll be in. Weekly drawing winners then go right back in the fishbowl for all other drawings.
Our first drawing is Sunday evening , Oct 23 for a $50 Gift Certificate to Crabs to Go (Always Awesome Seafood at Rts 50 & 589) a 30 pack of Natty Light from Raceway Citgo plus a sweet 24 qt igloo super cooler donated by surf fishing legend, Acie Mankins, to put it all in..
On Oct 30th we'll draw for a sweet St. Croix trigger stick perfect for fluke/flounder and sea bass on our reefs donated by the Morning Star partyboat.
For a very long time Benelli USA has donated a sporting shotgun for our annual raffle. This year's Grand Prize Benelli is an Ethos Sport in 12ga, a claybird busting machine if ever there was, (or $1500.00 if not a shooter)
Newly joining our reef building effort is Park Place Jewlers of Ocean City. The Ferrantes have donated a handsome men's watch and a diamond covered gold hook necklace we'll also give away during the grand prize drawing on New Year's Day.
Another awesome donation was made by Ben Wood. Generous in the extreme for our pre-covid dinners and now having outdone himself, this year he's given us a new Savage rifle in 30-06. We'll draw a raffle ticket for that the week before MD's deer season.
I think it fair to say every single weekly prize will be worth a hundred fifty bucks - some a lot more. Pitching in to this effort: St. Croix Rods - AllTackle & Atlantic Tackle in West O -- Nick Denny's Photography - George Kalwa's Art - Crabs to Go - Optical Galeria - Lenny Rudow's Fish Talk - Scott Lenox's Fish in OC.. Acie Mankins - Sea Bass Bob - Gerry Meadows - Morning Star Partyboat..
OCRF's 2022 Benelli/Park Place Jewlers Annual Reef Raffle. One ticket for $10 - six for $50 - fourteen for $100 - plus an additional ticket for every additional hundred.
A buyer of $200.00 worth, for instance, would be getting 15 tix per hundred; at $300 it would be 16 tix per one hundred so 48 tickets..
Taking care of raffle tix all last summer through to New Years was one heck of a burden. Had to shorten it up. We now have 10 weeks & 11 drawings to make it a good one. Buy tickets online. Courtney and I will fill the name in on all your tickets, then send a pic via email. If you don't have a pic within 48 hours? Email!
Regular reef building sponsors will know the Ocean City Reef Foundation has no one on salary, no office rent - no one's having steak dinners on donors' dollars (though we will treat volunteers to a slice of Miones' pizza or Royal Farms chicken on occasion!)
In as much as possible - donations become reef. Many of the reefs we're building will still be enjoyed by divers and fishers centuries from now.
We have a small tug, a barge with several pipe bundles, a load of 260 pyramid units all in the immediate pipeline.
I also have in mind the most biologically productive reef I've yet imagined. Need to build a demo at the Bass Grounds 9 miles off Ocean City, MD. Would make an incredible biofilter in Chesapeake Bay. Will even be sending a fundraising letter for that..
Turn the ocean blue and fill it with fish.
Growing coral can't be a bad thing.
Cheers
Monty