Spring’s Winter Fishing

Happy St Paddy’s day!

The water temperatures have plummeted heavily since this last winter blast.  The Inland Bays and tidal creeks have dropped almost fourteen degrees.  At the beginning of the week Masseys Landing was in the upper forties and today it is peaking to about thirty-six degrees, dropping as low as thirty-four degrees the last couple of days.  The Indian River at Cupola Park and the Broadkill River in Milton were up as high as fifty-four degrees and have dropped a solid fourteen degrees..  These past few days  of bone chilling cold has not helped the waters warm up or the fishing.  Mostly because no one wants to fish in bone chilling cold winds, but the sudden water temperature drop shuts the fish down as well.  That snow didn’t help either.  Don’t expect the waters to warm up too fast, the run off from the melting snow will keep the tidal creeks and Delaware Bay cold for several days.  The fish will keep feeding, but it is like winter fishing all over again, in the spring.  We will see a warm up start next week, but it will still take a few days for the water to get the chill out.

Last week the fishing was really picking up around Delmarva.  Warm water discharge fishing for striped bass in the Chesapeake bay has been on fire.  Not a huge secret, depending on who you ask.  The tidal rivers that feed the Chesapeake bay are loading up with striped bass chasing the herring.  The Morning Star with Captain Monty and the boys were yanking mackerel threat a time for a couple of days until the weather showed up.  Over here in Delaware the Broad Creek and Phillips Landing was on fire for a few days with striped bass.  Anglers fishing for large mouth bass with light gear were surprised to start landing upwards of twenty pound striped bass on crank baits.  That will get your blood going for sure, you have to be there when the fish move through its not like there is a schedule.

White perch and yellow perch action is still good and with the sudden temperature drops they are a bit deeper.  Most of the fish are moving to deeper water which is actually warmer than the shallows right now.   That will change next week as we slowly warm back up.  Bloodworms have been great for short striped bass. Minnows have been the best for crappie and even the bass are hammering those baits, glass shrimp are good but you have to go catch them in a tidal creek.  There is always pickerel action in the ponds they never stop hitting and the bass were starting to hit better with the warm up and will still hit, just have to use your winter tactics.  Even the bait shops that normally open the first of March decided to give it a few days from this storm, too cold to fish or sit in an empty shop.

Tautog is still good action offshore.  Many anglers are starting to get into jigging for them and are doing rather well.  The boys at the Lead Pot in Dagsboro have a new white legger jig they make which looks deadly and Captain Chris Ragni proved that last week with his personal best caught aboard the Wreckaholic.  The season for tautog will switch up on April first, the limit will go from five fish to three per angler, and that season lasts until May eleventh.  There is plenty of time and boats to hire for a little taugin’ this spring.

The surf is quiet, but soon we should see some action aside from Jersey flounder (skates) and dogfish.  There were some nice short striped bass schooling up on the beaches south of us in Ocean City last weekend, but the cold snap shut that down.  The bridges in Ocean City have seen some decent short striped bass action, but again the cold wore on that action as well.  Hopefully with the warm up next week we will see some more of that action.  We will be getting out more as soon as it warms up, this last week was better to stay home and work on the Delmarva Outdoors Expo coming up on April 28th to the 30th.  This is going to be a great outdoors show and we hope to see everyone there.

Fish On!

Rich King

Tide Indian River Inlet …