Fresh Ocean City Fishing Reports

Flounder fishing is heating up as the water warms in our back bays. The heat has the fish fired up and chewing.

The back bay flounder bite is heating up as the water is now reaching prime temps. Charley and his crew caught in the double digits today including a few keepers for the table. Weekdays with less boat traffic have shown the best results. The flounder are fired up right now!

Action was slow due to cool water temps and not ideal weather but should improve this week with much warmer weather.

Hey Gang, That in initial wave of large fish that were found off of North Jersey finally made their way to the Cape-Atlantic area. Typical of the past few years, our friends are finding they are more scattered and need to be trolled up. Reports are most are being found beyond the legal limit of 3 miles. The main concentration of linesiders is still up around Raritan Bay and the outside of Sandy Hook. They extend as far South as Island Beach State Park. "Up North", specifically Manasquan Inlet, where we moved the boat for the month of November, we are doing pretty good the past few days. Look for our "Mighty Heron Charters - Manasquan" listing on fishingbooker to get in on the action before the end of November.

Flounder season is now open and Mod Squad charters will be on the fish now until the season closes in september. In the photo, the angler to the left is holding one of the many behemoth doormats that landed on our deck last season. For comparison, the fish next to it was over 20”. Congrats to Matt and his crew.

The air is hot, and the water has really warmed up. We have moved into classic summer fishing with a nice wrinkle this season. + Bay fishing is shifting into mid-summer mode. We are seeing many flounders and as usual for this time of year the keeper to throwback ratio is getting higher. Still keepers around and just because a fish might not be a "keeper", it does not mean it is not a nice fish. Charlie, his grandson Carter, and his pal Justin landed five keepers including a 23-inch 4.5-pound flounder on a recent bay trip. The "snapper/tailor" blue fish bite has been a little disappointing. By now, we hope to see more "pop-ups" of these guys. We feel confident they will make a better showing soon. The weakfish have been bigger this year but still not considerable numbers. Hopefully, they will continue to recover. A pleasant surprise is the large numbers of croakers showing up both in the bay and the ocean. They have not been this far North in many years. The croakers in the bay are small (think white perch) but they have been thick and provide action. Get enough of the larger ones and it is fish taco time. The reef and wreck fishing on our 5-hour ocean trip is already better than last year, when chilly water really put a damper on the bite. Nice - sized flounder are coming over the side pretty consistently. A fair number of keeper sized black sea bass are in the mix. Reports are that cobia are showing up and we hope to try for them later in the week. Small sharks are definitely around. We have not yet seen large schools of bunker to try to snag-n-drop for near-shore sub-tropicals. The tuna bite has been good to very good. They have been found as close as some of the ridges only 15 miles off the coast. Canyons are more consistent. We still have no consistent reports of mahi, but we will be trying twice this week. As important as fishing is, we are still very happy to have out so many wonderful families creating memories.