The Vom Hofe connection came into being when Ocean City bought the Edward Vom Hofe reel company around 1940. Ocean City did market Vom Hofe reels but also designed a new series of big game reels which were cradle mounted. These cradle mounted reels were produced before and after the war and were built by a team effort of Ocean City and Vom Hofe engineers. After the war, Ocean City spun off Vom Hofe and started to sell these big game reels in the standard configuration without the cradle mounting.
Ocean City was now in direct competition with Penn Senator reels for the Light Tackle and Heavy Tackle Big Game reel market by creating the Ocean City 600 series of big game reels, which were made in sizes from 4/0 to 16/0.

Here is the Ocean City 612. A reel in the 12/0 size is a reel designed for big fish. I weighs in the neighborhood of eight pounds and should be capable of handling Tuna and Marlin. It is not the top of the size range but it is definitely Big Game.

The spool's axle and flanges are one piece. There is a forward turnbuckle rod clamp with very nice leather chafing strip mounted into the clamp and there are upper lugs for a harness mount. Externally these 12/0's were as strong as the competitions and priced comparably.

The 12/0 drags are questionable. There is a drag cup which can be removed externally by simply removing the handle and star wheel. A good design for a big game reel but there were only three brake lining friction washers. For a 12/0, there should have been more brake.

The bridge assembly has strong bronze main and pinion gears to drive the spool but there is a weak link in the drive train and that is the pinion clutch. The clutch is the steel washer with four slots cut in it sitting next to the pinion gear. Notice the bevel cuts on one side of the slot. This bevel has the tendency to wear and allow the spool to free spool forward with the free spool lever engaged. That is a major malfunction when you are fighting a large game fish or simply when you are reeling in your line.

Here is can be seen how close the tolerance is with the clutch engaged into the spool dogs. There are four slots cut into the clutch but only two male dogs on the spool. As these slots wear the spool will slip.
When we move to the Ocean City 616--16/0 reel, we move into the Tank category. A 16/0 reel is massive, weighs over 10 pounds and will hold 1000 yards of 100 pound test line. This reel is meant for monster fish up to and over 1000 pounds. When a reel is built up to this size, extra engineering is needed but Ocean City simply carried its design forward as did Penn but the Penn design was able to withstand the growth. The same problems with the pinion clutch of the 12/0 exist in the 16/0.

The Ocean City 16/0 is a hard to find and desirable collectible. The one pictured here is next to new. The handle knob is the same size as the 12/0 knob but the handle blade is longer, giving the angler more torque. The diameter and width of the 16/0 is greater than the 12/0 and that same strong spool is present, only bigger.

The 16/0 adds a rear turnbuckle rod clamp assembly which the 12/0 does not have but the stand of the reel remains the same gauge metal as the 12/0 but it is wider and prone to being bent under stress. I see the stand as the foundation of a reel and it should be one of the strongest parts.

If you open up a 16/0 head plate, what you find is a very strong looking bridge assembly but that weak link pinion clutch is still present.

The upgrade here is the pinion gear, which is no longer bronze in the 16/0 but has been changed to stronger steel. As I look at the old clutch that mounts to the pinion gear I wonder why that design persisted. The entire heart of the reels strength is being given to the clutch and the clutch is prone to failure.

Another strange design change on the 16/0 is the drag stack. Here Ocean City upgraded the amount of friction washers to five instead of the three used in the 12/0 but three of those five washers stayed at the same diameter of the 12/0 washers. Ocean City actually made the bottom of the drag cup a smaller diameter than the top. The drag cup is built in a step fashion which decreased the surface area of the drags.
These Ocean City big game reels are much harder to find in today's collector market than Penn Senators and I suspect that is because they did not stand the test of time in the world of Big Game fishing and therefore sold in lower quantities than their competitors. They are interesting reels with great history but as for fishing, I would take a Penn.
Pictures were contributed by my friend Ed Miller, who is a Big Game fisherman, IGFA member and official IGFA observer. He shares my
opinions on these reels.
Hope I did not bore you guys with my observations but I just wanted to get my opinion out. I am a fan of Ocean City and Penn reels and am trying to see a reason why one company survived and the other did not.