First Ever Opah Caught off of Ocean City, MD

The way the inshore fishing has been going I figured I might get a few pics of tautog and rockfish today (which I did), but I never thought that I’d get the text that I got this afternoon or see the fish that I saw tonight.

At about 2:30 this afternoon I got a text from offshore from my buddy Captain Austin Ensor of the Primary Search out of Sunset Marina that read, “I need you to call someone at DNR and ask them if Opah (yes the west coast round orange fish) are legal to harvest in MD.) After about 5 minutes of waiting while I pondered how drunk Austin might have gotten himself offshore I got another….”Please! I have a 80-100 pound sword and an “expletive deleted” opah on board…..it’s huge and orange!”

I immediately called my DNR connection and he assured me that Opah, being that one has never been caught out of Maryland…EVER, was not regulated by MD DNR and was therefore ok to harvest. I sent Austin the text confirming that he could keep the fish, but I’ll be honest…..I couldn’t believe it was actually an opah until I saw it for myself.

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