Foul Weather Fishing

Lovely weather we are having today, but the fish don’t care.  The water temperatures at Masseys landing are bouncing between fifty-nine and sixty-one degrees.  The Delaware bay and surf are around sixty-one degrees.  The temperatures are great for these big bluefish and striped bass.  The big blues have schooled up and are now being more aggressive.  Be careful in the surf they are slamming rigs and cutting lines.  Lot of lost rigs today, just in a couple of hours.  Keep your gear closer to shore they will come in close to the beach.   The blues are all over the place.  Rumor has it one was caught all the way up in Milton in the Broadkill river.  Some anglers were perch fishing and hit a sizable bluefish.  The inland bays have schools roaming around and feeding on everything.   Only place we haven’t caught any is the Lewes Canal, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t in there.  They are in the Broadkill river and around Lewes Beach.   The weekend weather  does not look great for Saturday at all, today was no picnic either.

Flounder are starting to hit more frequently in the Lewes Canal and the Indian River Inlet.  There have been some nice sized fish caught in the last couple of days.   Anglers are drifting minnows and some are jigging using gulp on bucktails.  Hopefully we see some better flounder catching this year around the inland bays, but it is still very early in the season.   Decent flounder action around the bridges in Ocean City and the back bays.

Striped bass action has been slow for migratory fish, but they are showing up in the surf and the Indian River Inlet.  Problem is the blue fish will destroy your baits. If you can get away from them or behind them you will have a better chance at striped bass.  There are still little bass all over the place, but again they avoid the bluefish.  Everything avoids these schools of bluefish, even the birds.  The Oceanic Fishing Pier in Ocean City is seeing some decent keeper striped bass action.   Assateague Island State Park has some good bass action and the Chesapeake Bay is still full of post spawn bass.  We are seeing some on the move north, but not as many as we would like, when the food moves more they will move.  No reason to leave when you have plenty to eat and the right water temperatures.  A few nice sized migratory bass have been caught from the surf in New Jersey.

Black drum is getting better and better in the Delaware Bay, even the surf is producing some nice fish.  Assateague is seeing some great action still.  Using clams has been the best, but sand fleas or shrimp is holding its own for bait.  many of the larger drum are upwards of sixty pounds.  I know a few netters doing research who are getting their nets torn up by big black drum.  I prefer to keep the smaller puppy drum for the table and let the big ones go, many of them are full of worms.  Besides cleaning those big drum is a real chore.  You almost need a reciprocating saw just to cut into them and the scales are very tough to get off.  The smaller ones are not as bad.

Fish On!

Rich King

Tides into weekend at Indian River Inlet …