Banging The Drum Or Floating For Flatties

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The beginning of the season is always my favorite.  Everyone is freaking out where can I catch a fish, or about too many people in one area.  Meanwhile more and more species are showing up and more areas turn hot for fishing.  We are in that time period right now, you can now spread about the county and fish.  Flounder are showing up in the Lewes Canal and inland bays.  Drum are running the Delaware Bay beaches from Broadkill to Slaughter beach.  The only problem with the drum is it is a very small window and the baits are odd, like Fishbites odd.  Not your traditional bloodworm formulas either but the other sand flea formulas.  I would assume clam would work, but none were hitting clam.  The striped bass along the bay beaches are hitting mullet and bunker.  The drum hit the beaches for all of twenty minutes, hammered all of the lines in the water and then the bite was off.  As fast as it started it died, if you weren’t there at thew right time you missed it.  Buddy of mine happened to be there checking the beach when he hooked into a nice thirty pounder.  The beauty of all these fish showing up around the same time is it gives anglers many options to catch, without being on top of one another.  All the drum caught were released, which is good to see for the health of future stocks and for the fact some of these big drum have worms.

Flounder are hitting minnows and pink gulp is working well.  Get the nuclear chicken ready because those fish love that pink and chartreuse combination.   Jigging for them with bucktails and soft plastics in a tandem rig, or tied up like a speck rig.  Drifting minnows or large strips of squid.  The flats at Cape Henlopen should have some flounder lurking in the low areas.  Kayaks or wading will be required.  You can cast far from shore but a lot of people use that area, so it is better to wade than set up and send out lines.  The pier is halfway done as far as decking, hopefully they get that done soon.  Fishing the pier would be a good choice right now.  In the mean time there are piers at Holts Landing, Masseys Landing, and the town docks in Lewes.  Ocean City has the Oceanic Pier, the ocean pier is still being rebuilt from Storm Jonas damage.  Milford has a pier on the Mispillion River and Milton has a pier at the headwaters of the Broadkill River.  Granted these do not have the same fishing as the Cape Henlopen Pier, but they are options until Memorial Day Weekend.  In the mean time get out there and fish and have fun.  You can’t catch from the couch.

The offshore boys are getting that itch, while watching the water temperatures near the canyons.  That is about to jump off for our area.  Crabbing is doing great for many inland bay residents right from the piers.

Fish On!!

Rich King

Fish Pictures this weekend into this week.  Lot of variety out there.
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