“There’s no decent place to tautog fish in Ocean City! Is there?

With Delaware having a spring closed season extending from May 12th through
June 30th, there will be some heavy pressure in Ocean City from serious
tautog anglers. Though Ocean city does not have the wide-open space of
Indian River Inlet, it has its little “nooks and crannies” where an angler
can drop in a line and catch some tautog.

Tautog is a member of the wrasse family. It lives near the bottom in any
kind of structure. They like rocks, wrecks, boulders, mussel and oyster
beds, bridge pilings, dock pilings, riprap, cement slabs, and fast running
current. We catch them in the United States from Massachusetts to South
Carolina. Up north, anglers call them “blackfish.” Tautog range in color
from dark green to black with larger male tautog having a white chin and a
protruding forehead.

Tautog are very slow growing. Though tautog have been caught up to 22
pounds, the average fish of 2 to 4 pounds are 6 to 10 years old! The male
tautog grow faster and live longer than the female. They can live up to 35
years! Females can be sexually mature at 12-inches and produce 30,000 eggs.
Many good tautog anglers like to release the females and only keep males.

Female tautog tend to be a duller more blotchy brown color while males are
more gray or black. During spawning season in the spring, females can
obviously be full of eggs. Adult males often have a white chin and have a
single small white spot on their mid-side.

Tautog are daytime feeders. Their feeding peaks at dawn and dusk, so the
early riser certainly “does” get the worm! Combine this with a good tide,
two hours either side of slack low or slack high tide, and one can get their
limit in a hurry! At night they rest. It is very unusual to catch a tautog
at night. Occasionally someone will accidentally snag one. Fishing dawn and
dusk will also give the angler the advantage of “less crowded” fishing
conditions. Most vacationers tend to fish in the 9-5-type time frame while
they are fitting other activities (like dinner) into their family schedules!

Tautog are hard fighters and lots of fun to catch. Even if you are releasing
your tautog, the “grouper-like” pull of the tautog is awesome! Since the
fish are right down in the rocks or bottom debris, one needs a rod with some
“backbone” and a reel spooled with at least 20-pound test. If you’re fishing
with light tackle and 10-pound test, you may have fun catching the smaller
ones, but you are unlikely to actually get a “keeper” up unless you are
fishing with some kind of Spectra “thin diameter line.” I like to spool my
reel with Power-Pro 50# test line and tie in a monofilament leader out of
40-pound test with a uni-knot to tie two lines together. If you just don’t
know how to do that, use a barrel swivel.

A simple rig is to tie a loop with an overhand surgeon’s knot at the very
end of your line and slip in a one to five ounce flat, inline, or bank
sinker. Go up a couple inches and tie another overhand surgeon’s knot a
couple inches long and slip in a single loose hook. A short shank Octopus
hook in the #2/0 range is popular in our area. Most anglers like to use
black.

There are plenty rigs out there already tied up as well, but the rig is so
simple to make you will save yourself a few bucks making them yourself.

Flip your rig out into the water. Not too far…. Not too close…. This is
where trial and error and a little frustration comes in. Feel the sinker
fall in a hole, reel in all slack, and then wait. If you keep moving your
sinker here and there you’ll get hung in a snag. If the tide takes it too
quickly, you threw out too far. If you get hung up in structure right off
the bat, you threw in too close. Once you’re in a good spot, keep it still!

Once you feel a bite, let the fish tap it once or twice, lower the rod tip
down, and then raise it up and set the hook! Get it up quick or it will get
hung in a snag.

“I can feel the fish on, but the dang gone sinker is stuck in a rock or
something!!!!!”

That’s where I like the rubber band trick. Loop a heavy-duty rubber band in
the sinker loop and attach the sinker to the rubber band. If you get a nice
fish on, and the sinker gets caught in the rocks, you can break the rubber
band and get the fish! (Some anglers also tie the sinker on with lighter
monofilament, something like 8 or 10 pound test that will break easily.)

The bait?

For tautog, you got to use some sort of crustacean or clam or you won’t
catch them!
The two baits you can buy from tackle stores are green crabs and sand fleas
(sand crabs). Green crabs aren’t natural to our waters, so be sure NOT to
release them into the water. Small ones can be used whole. Larger one are
broken in half. Pull off the shell, and cut them with a sharp pair of
scissors. Some people use the legs, while other cut them off. Shove the hook
in a leg socket.

Sand crabs, those little crabs you dig on the beach are easy to use. Just
hook them thru the apron and out the outer shell with the hook protruding an
eighth of an inch. Or just hook them through the tail end.

You can turn over rocks and find marsh crabs, or run up and down a marsh and
grab fiddler crabs. You can smack open clams. You can buy live blue crabs in
the market. Some people like to use the Berkley Gulp sand crabs or the Clam
Fishbites. I like the real thing!

The places?

The Ocean City Inlet is always good. The biggest ones come from the very
end, but it’s hard to fish and you need a long rod. All along the rocks and
cement wall one can find tautog. Anglers fish the very end of the Oceanic
Pier and cast towards the rocks and catch some really nice ones. There’s a
public bulkhead that runs all the way from 2nd to 4th Streets on the
bayside. This is very good with either end being the best. Then, to top it
off, anglers fish the end of 1st Street, 5th Street, and 6th Streets. These
areas get crowded, so go early or dusk. 9th Street Pier sees some, but it is
not the best place to go. The Route 50 Bridge is a really “hot” place to
tautog fish. The closer to the pilings near the draw of the Bridge is best,
but anglers can actually catch tautog all up and down the bridge in the
deeper holes.

If you have a boat, you can cast at the rocks around the South Jetty. There
are some awesome catches of tautog there. Offshore, on any of the
artificial reef sites where there is structure, there are tautog! I’ve even
seen tautog come out of the very deep hole next to the marsh in the
Thorofare.

Tautog are really good to eat, but not the easiest to clean. They have no
scales but have a tough hide. Chill the fish first as it makes them easier
to clean. The meat stays whiter too if you clean a fish after it’s expired.
Fillet and then skin the fillet. It is a very white, firm piece of meat.

Because of illegal marketing of undersized live tautog, DNR officials
regularly check your tautog to make sure they are of the legal size limit.
Several of my customers have gotten $100 tickets because they did not
measure them correctly. Lay the fish on top of the ruler. Do not try to
measure a fish by laying the ruler on top of the fish. It can be off by ½ an
inch. And that’s all it takes to get a ticket!

Good fishing….