We took the 52′ Ocean Saltitude down to Ocean City, Maryland on Thursday to fish the Challenge Cup which is Cape May vx Ocean City. The fishing has been scattered this September which is uncharacteristic for this time of year, but everyone was amped and ready to go for it.
FRIDAY we ran down towards the NE corner of the Norfolk Canyon and started in 50 fathoms just above the canyon. The first 3 hours were slow for us with no bites. We were fishing in Blue Green 79.5 degree water. Finally we picked up a single white marlin and started marking solid bait. We pounded it out here for the remainder of the day an managed to go 4/7 on white marlin and saw one more. Fun day for sure and this had us in the hunt.
SATURDAY we ran right back to where we had the bites and found the bait again before lines in. We gave it a few hours without a bite then started looking for something better. We picked up and ran to the southern part of the Norfolk where there was a hard edge and a rip line. All that amounted to were a few small mahi bites and one wahoo bite. We worked back up towards the north and late in the day we luckily ran over a hungry white that piled on the black and red party skirt on my bridge rod and that was all we had all day.
Cape May ended up winning the tournament for the 4th year in a row. We had a lot of fun and even with the mediocre fishing, we still managed to pick up some fish.