Despite slow fishing, a beautiful day on the water

I have been looking forward to a deep-drop fishing trip on the Angler head boat out of Ocean City, Md., since sometime last summer when I booked the trip. I kept checking the weather on the long-range forecast and could hardly believe it when I saw light winds and small seas. Of course that was inshore; the canyon forecast was 20 to 30 knots with 7- to 8-foot waves, but I refused to believe that one.

So, last Tuesday, I was up at 1 a.m. and made it to the boat in time for the 3:30 a.m. departure. We cleared the inlet and, as advertised, ran into a very nice 1- to 2-foot sea.

After a four-hour run, we set up for the sea bass portion of the trip.

My squid-baited rig no sooner hit bottom that I had a solid hit, pulling up a nice sea bass. I thought, this is going to be a great trip. Boy, was I wrong. It turned out that was to be my only keeper of the 14-hour outing.

The folks around me didn’t seem to be doing any better. We kept dropping down and catching short sea bass, but no keepers. Every once in a great while someone would get a keeper, but not me.  

Then to add insult to injury, around midday, I found out we were not going deep-dropping because those nasty weather reports I kept seeing from the canyons were true. I was not a happy camper. Granted, I would have been a lot less happy trying to hold on in 7- to 8-foot seas and not catching anything, but still, I was very disappointed.

I will say one thing about getting up at 1 a.m., you don’t have any problem catching naps when the captain moves the boat between fishing spots. And we did move around a lot.

The fellows fishing to my right finally gave up on the sea bass and rigged up for flounder. They used Gulp! Twister Tails on top-bottom rigs and began catching keepers. I had nothing for flounder because I didn’t think we would be fishing for them.

The gentleman to my left used only jigs. He had quite a selection. Unfortunately, his catch rate was even lower than mine. I was amazed at how small a sea bass could attack such a large jig. I know how sore my hands get just jigging my bottom rig; his must really be sore or very strong, because he gave those jigs a real workout.

As the day drew to a close, I began to feel sorry for myself. Then I said, “Wake up, stupid! You’re 82 years old. You just spent 14 hours on a beautiful ocean catching fish. What more do you want?” My answer, “Can’t think of a thing.”

I did learn some things Tuesday. My bottom rig had fancy doo-dads while the ones made by the mates are just two plain hooks. On previous trips on the Angler, I have used the rigs made by the mates and had limit catches. From now on, I will use mate-made rigs and only those rigs.

The last trip I made with the Angler, I sat in the stern and had 20 keeper sea bass. On Tuesday, I sat in the stern and had one keeper. When the boat is going to be drifting, where you sit is not important. I used to like to sit on the bow so I could change sides depending on which way the boat was drifting. The last time I sat on the bow, the boat was so full I could not change sides.

As I was having my one fish cleaned, another angler heard that I only had one fish and tossed in four of his. I wish I’d had enough sense to get his name so I could thank him properly, but I did thank him profusely at the time. 

Then the mate who was cleaning the fish tossed in a flounder, so I ended the day with five sea bass and one flounder. When I think back to all the times when I have given back fish when I have caught more then my limit, I guess this time it was my turn to receive. 

As I was heading off the dock and back to my truck, a fine lady, the only one onboard, offered to carry my rods and pull my cooler back to my truck. If I was 60 years younger, I would think she was flirting with me, but now I know she was just being nice.

Finally, when I got home, there was an email from the Angler refunding me $100 because we didn’t go deep-dropping.