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Steve Doctor, Fisheries Biologist - Ocean City, MD
- Total Reports: 12
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Posted on October 19, 2012 | Permalink
Downtown Ocean City Grand Slam
Type: Coast
Region: Eastern
Location: Ocean City
The fishing downtown off the rocks has been spectacular the past few weeks. We have come up with our own downtown grand slam: it is a tautog, sheepshead, black drum, and red drum. All of these are biting quite well on sand fleas and green crabs. The only drawback is lots of snags and rig tying. Great eating tho…
Posted on September 6, 2012 | Permalink
Bites on in Garrett County
Type: Freshwater
Region: Western
Location: Garrett County
My friend Jordan Sweitzer sent me this picture from one of our favorite fishing holes.
Posted on August 28, 2012 | Permalink
Summer Coastal Fishing Report
Type: Ocean
Region: Eastern
Location: Ocean City
This summer has seen some of the warmest water temperatures near the beach in years. At the beginning of August we had consistent temperatures in the low 80’s which made for great surfing and spear fishing. It also brought in a lot of southern species that stuck around for longer than usual. We actually started targeting cobia and trigger fish. There were also a lot of summer flounder at the near shore wrecks. The head boat anglers did quite well on decent sized fluke throughout the mid and late summer.
Posted on , 2011 | Permalink
Shark Tagging
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On Friday I was invited along on a shark tagging trip out of Ocean City. NMFS through its APEX predator program has been supplying tags to anglers to tag sharks since 1962 (http://na.nefsc.noaa.gov/sharks/intro.html). Unfortunately due to budget cuts the program is loosing funding and they are less able to supply tags. I went out with Captain Mark Sampson who has been the leader in shark conservation in Maryland since it was a concept. He has personally tagged over a thousand sharks and some of his returns have been from as far as the Azores and Spain. We were lucky enough to capture a sandbar shark. If you look at the photo closely you can see that the shark has been bit in the tail by another shark. Mark says that this has been occurring more frequently. We wondered is it because there are more sharks or do they maybe have less to eat?
You will also see a white piece of PVC in the photos. This is a blocker that Mark has developed to stop the sharks from swallowing the hook, thus preventing deep hooking. You can see it also worked on a Mahi that took shark bait. Marks latest push is to get people to use circle hooks when shark fishing. We discussed getting together to do a cooperative study as NMFS says there is no data on sharks and circle hooks at this time. Mark says they work well to prevent deep hooking in sharks. Mark has a webpage called bigsharks.com. There is a link to some video he recently shot of a Great White Shark that is supposed to be fantastic. He has been hanging a go pro camera from a kite to film and the video is great I hear.
Posted on July 25, 2011 | Permalink
Ocean Pines Fishing Rodeo
Type: Freshwater
Region: Eastern
Location: Ocean Pines
The Ocean Pines Anglers Club had their kids fishing tournament on Saturday in Ocean Pines and it was a huge success. Last year there were 115 anglers and they captured 100 fish. This year there were 84 anglers and they captured 164 fish. DNR freshwater took the time to drive down 200 bluegills from Hagerstown to give the event a little boost. There is a picture I attached of a grandfather with his granddaughter fishing. Soon after I took the picture they caught a bluegill: they were ecstatic! Most all of the children caught at least one fish and there was a great atmosphere. The Anglers club made the event a catch and release event whereby each kid was given a card and the judges wrote the length of each fish they caught on it. This made it easy for the kids to learn the value of catch and release fishing. I can’t say enough good things about the Ocean Pines Anglers Club and DNR’s freshwater guys taking the time to help these kids enjoy the hottest day of the year fishing.
Posted on June 28, 2011 | Permalink
Garrett County Fishing Trip
Type: Freshwater
Region: Western
Location: Garrett County
I recently spent a week with my nieces up in Garrett County and was tasked with entertainment for the week. So I decided to take the nieces fishing for a few days. The first day we spent on Deep Creek Lake drifting minnows and worms and they caught some huge yellow perch. They thoroughly enjoyed the activity, as soon as they started catching some fish. The next day we went on my favorite wild and scenic river. In a full day of fishing we caught over 40 smallmouth bass, rock bass, chubs, and rainbow trout. I take my hat off to you freshwater guys. You are really doing a great job! Thanks
Posted on May 25, 2011 | Permalink
Sea Bass Fishing
Type: Ocean
Region: Ocean
Location: Ocean City
Sea Bass season open up on Sunday and I went fishing out of Ocean City on a head boat for opening day. We ran for about two hours out to the reef and fished in 90 to 100 feet of water using squid for bait. The sea bass were cooperative and we also caught a few nice codfish. The male sea bass are all colored up in blue now and are quite pretty. We ended up the day with about ten large bass apiece. The head boats are running specials for sea bass fishing the next few weeks, and are a great way to fish for sea bass. Because of the current and wind it is sometimes necessary to double anchor to get right on the wrecks and our local captains are the best at it.
Posted on April 7, 2011 | Permalink
Seasonal Visitors
Type: Ocean
Region: Eastern
Location: Ocean City
We have some seasonal visitors that have been hanging around north of the 50 bridge this winter. Evidently there have been a lot of these critters up and down the coast this winter. The last three years we have seen them a lot, and they are hanging around longer and longer each year. They are both harp and harbor seals. Mostly they have been hanging out on Skimmer Island and the small Island just north of there. There are a couple of babies that are way past cute. Photo compliments of Dr Roman Jesien.
Posted on October 25, 2010 | Permalink
Artificial Reef
Type: Ocean
Region: Ocean
Location: Offshore Artificial Reef
Recently a few of the biologists from the coastal program went out in the ocean and sampled tautog on a local headboat to get age, sex, length, weight information for the regional stock assessment. It was really rough so we had to stay close to home and we got bounced around a good bit. The tautog would not bite at all at the first reef we tried, but we did much better on an artificial reef at the second site. They bit readily and it wasn’t long before we had over 50 fish in the boat to sample. The captain asked if we had enough and I asked him if he wouldn’t mind trying one more spot before we went in. We went to an artificial reef spot in 30 feet of water near the inlet and soon hooked up to some larger fish. They turned out to be black drum and sheepshead and were pretty decent size. It made a great end to a great day. We donated the fish meat to local shelter, so all in all I was feeling pretty good about the day. Not a bad day at the office! By the way the tautog fishing is great right now both off the Island rocks and on the nearby reefs.
Posted on September 2, 2010 | Permalink
Fishing on the front of Earl
Type: Ocean
Region: Eastern
Location: Ocean City
Hurricanes bring all kinds of things to Ocean City; great surf, too much wind, and large pelagics! The recent spat of offshore hurricanes is no exception, we have been experiencing great marlin fishing the past two years in September and this year is the best so far. Yesterday I went 80 miles southeast to between the Washington and Norfolk canyons in the deep and experienced a truly blue planet day. Packs of three to five white marlin were balling up schools of bait on the surface, and cutting back and forth through the bait slashing and eating. On the tower you could clearly see them lit up pelagic blue and having a time of it. We were fortunate enough to get 20 solid bites, but due to some faulty leader material only got six to the boat (he he: did I just complain about only catching six marlin in a day?)
Through the day we saw over a hundred marlin and not just glimpses but we watched them swimming around and in and out of our spread continuously most of the day. One time while on the tower watching for fish, I spotted a boil, and expecting a marlin I turned the boat toward it. Up came not a marlin but a HUGE black whale, I NEARLY FELL OFF THE TOWER I WAS SO SURPRISED. It was massive and coal black. Usually when you see a whale around here they are traveling and you see them again and again. This one didn’t back come up and my friend showed it to me descending straight down on the depth finder. We were in 800 fathoms of water (4,800 feet), and he said he has seen them drop over 1000 feet before he lost it on the sounder! Going down to eat squid I would presume- pretty impressive dive for a free diver I’d say!
After Earl passes by and it calms down for a day or two, its back to the deep to see what has been left behind this time. Ocean City is truly the WHITE MARLIN CAPITAL OF THE WORLD!
PS Summer Flounder (Big Flounder) and Black Sea Bass (Big Sea Bass) fishing is picking up- stay tuned.