It was a great weekend for fishing for some, and not so good for others, the trials and tribulations of trying to catch. There were lots of small blue fish at the point today. Friends spent the day there tearing into them. Mullet rigs and spoons were producing nicely. Redfish are showing up in the surf still. From Fenwick to Cape Henlopen, and people seem to be doing better with spoons and small bucktails. White bucks with pink soft plastics. I just love it when a fish crushes a lure, the excitement from the hit is so much better, and you already have your rod in hand, there is no running to your gear in a rod holder. Granted you have to do a little more work, casting and all that, but the catch is much more satisfying. Cape Henlopen was producing shorty striped bass today as well on spoons. Sunday Steve Willams was fishing the south jetty at Indian River inlet and hitting nice shorts on a buck tail. He said several keeper redfish were also pulled form the wall and the beach. Larger blues are showing up inside the inlet, just hard to maneuver in there with a lot of boats due to the dredge setup. Judy and Paul Mangini have been doing well on shorts trying to hook up on a keeper striped bass. Several nice keepers have been caught in IRI with live spot or pinfish. Many of the keeper fish have sea lice on them, which is a great indicator they came from the ocean. Definitely a good sign the fall run is slowly heating up in Delaware. Anglers up north in Jersey are starting to see much larger bass in schools and the larger fish are headed this way. I wish I could tell you exactly when and how many of these larger fish we will see, but then again no one really can. You just never know, one day the fish are here heavy, hitting hard, and then it just shuts down. We will keep you updated and let you know how it is going out there.
Shorty striped bass are all over the back bays. The best thing I can tell you for them is surface plugs and swim shads. darker colors at night and lighter colors during the day, yellow has been working well in some areas. Tom Wise and his crew ran into several schools a few days ago, fish were just boiling the water hammering baitfish. They were jumping out of the water all over the place, sometimes birds will help find these schools. For the most part a god rule of thumb is to look for fish feeding the marsh banks on outgoing tides. The baitfish move out of the grasses and into the main water area and the fish are there waiting for them. Follow the tides and fish the grass lines. Stay away from the schools if you find them and cast to them or the school will spook and move. The Delaware bay and River has been heating up from Broadkill Beach to Battery Park in Old New Castle. Mikey Williamson was fishing the Port Penn area on Sunday and hammered a nice keeper on a plug, but it threw the hook during the retrieve. He did manage a few nice shorts and was happy to see that plugs do work even in dirty water. Dobbinsville area has been hot and even Woodland beach has seen a few nice fish. Reedy Point is always a good place too look for stripers. Big catfish are all over the place as well. A lot of folks are catching decent to citation sized perch in many of the small creeks and Broadkill River. Lewes canal has seen a variety in sizes of these perch and some nice short stripers. When I was on the bridge at IRI on Sunday I saw hundreds of birds working the water four hundred yards off shore. Pretty sure no one can cast that far, the fishing out front has been decent if you can find the fish and compete with the bait. There have been a few weakfish caught in the bays and the inlet as well, mostly on spoons, bucktails and flies.
The United States Coast Guard Indian River Station contacted me today to let everyone know they are probably going to start pulling the buoys in the bays the week of November fourth. They did ask me to put up a survey to see if people wanted to leave the buoys out there longer. They also asked me if I thought the striper anglers would want the buoys out there longer, I told them I could post the question to the DSF Facebook page. The general consensus was to leave them there a few more weeks. I do not know if that will happen, but it was nice of them to consider the anglers that would be in need. I suggest everyone who is boating this week and weekend to start marking buoys with their electronics if they have them to know the routes you will need to follow if the buoys are removed. Kudos to the USCG for asking everyone’s opinion on the matter. They take care of us when we are at our greatest need on the water. Next time you see a member of the Coast Guard, thank them for doing their incredibly hard job. I am still amazed watching them go out and do practice maneuvers during the latest Nor’Easter we had, and during hurricane Sandy. It is a year ago today we all had to batten down the hatches for that storm, and I will never forget covering that it, what a ride!
Saturday I met Captain Brian Wazlavek, Scott, John, Dawn, and Mate Jonathan Masten on the Lil Angler II of Delaware Family Fishing and we did some tautog fishing in the Delaware Bay. It was beautiful crisp morning. I was supposed to go out striper fishing with a friend of mine, but the small craft advisory for that afternoon cancelled the trip. However getting on the big boat would not be a problem. It was a nice ride out near the anchorage, and we set anchor and proceeded to fish. John hit the first tog as soon as his line was in the water, in fact I don’t think we even had other lines in yet. We spent the first part of the day yanking fish over the rail. Nice keepers were filling the box, and few huge oyster crackers. We were all talking trash and having a great time fishing. The wind cranked up about eleven, and the bay starting rocking the boat. It was not as bad as we had anticipated, so we stayed out until around four. Don’t get me wrong, we got rocked pretty good, but the fishing was great and no way were we leaving. The Captain can really put you on the fish, and he and Jonathan joined in on the fishing. This was a fun trip for everyone, and Scott managed to pick up two nice tog to enter in the tournament. If you want to have a great day on the water check out Delaware Family Fishing out of Lewes Delaware.
The north wall of the Indian River Inlet is shut down so the Army Corp of Engineers can fix the north wall. Last I heard the time frame to finish was ninety days from starting. The storm held that off, so we will see how long it takes. I would like to thank all of them for working night and day on this project. The beach replenishment crew deserves a huge thank you for working long hours into the night on their project. We now have a nice huge dune protecting route 1 from any upcoming storms. The last Nor’Easter was not too bad on their work and they recovered quickly, had that sand not been there we would have been driving the long way around the bays just to get from Dewey to Bethany. Thank you all for your hard work. Dewey and Rehoboth beaches are now being replenished as well. Broadkill beach is looking better and all of the beaches are filling back in nicely since the storm. The huge cuts and pools are starting to fill back in and smooth out. There is still a bit of a drop off to the water but it is more of a slope now and not jut a cliff like structure. The water is clearing up nicely on the beaches and the other day you could see at least four feet into the water at the inlet. Even Lewes Canal is cleaning up a bit, and I like to think the massive amounts of oysters growing everywhere are helping filter the water.
We still have huge trash problem at the inlets, Cape Henlopen Pier, all of the beaches, and even Massey’s Landing. People need to police their own trash and unfortunately speak up to others who do not. Respect the areas you are fishing, I am tired of picking up people’s discards. It boggles the mind that the goods people bring in weigh ten times than the trash they need to carry out. Your mother does not work at these places to clean up after you. A reader found trash buried on Fenwick Island over the weekend. Since when is the beach a personal dump? It is truly sad the shape our environment is in these days. We all have a responsibility to keep it clean. There is a proposal to put an outfall for treated water in Rehoboth, I personally think this would be a huge mistake and the folks at Surfrider foundation of Delaware are trying to get the word out to fight this proposal. Hopefully we can help get the word out and help them. I spent this Sunday just walking the beaches and picking up trash in the afternoon. Sometimes it is nice to just walk along the beach and contemplate life. Picking up trash while I do this helps the environment, but on the scale of things it is but a small dent in a huge problem. I pick up trash every time I go to the beach, and some days I spend more time picking up trash than I do fishing. As a bonus I did find my first piece of red sea glass on Conquest Beach. I know it seems hypocritical to collect sea glass when I complain about trash, but in a way it is removing trash from the beaches. I will start Monday meetings up again in a few weeks, and announce the locations soon. I have been asked to move the meetings around to different areas, and am working on locations. We may even do a few meetings in Milford. The meetings were slow during the summer, but who wants to talk about fishing when you can fish. I am definitely looking forward to the Saturday fly tying meets with the Saltwater Fly Anglers of Delaware this winter. I see some of the boys out and about, but that is nothing compared to a morning hanging out with them and all the stories. Sorry it has been a few days for a report but the site has been having some hacker issues, or keyboard cowards as I like to call them.
Fish On!!
Rich King