Striped Bass and Gator Blues in the House

That title is either a quick fishing report or the next band line up at your favorite watering hole.  Well if you haven’t heard by now, we have big migratory striped bass in the Delaware Bay and big slammer, gator bluefish.  The bass showed up after or during the nor’easter.  No one knows exactly when, since no one was fishing the bay during the storm.  That nor’easter definitely turned the fish on like a switch.  The rips at the overfalls has been decent fishing for larger up to forty pound striped bass, on stretch 25’s and bombers.  Indian River Inlet has seen more keepers as well as shorts.  Masseys landing has produced keepers at night too from the rail.  Before the storm IRI was not so hot for keepers, and afterwards, the action came hot.  Now don’t get too excited, there are not tons upon tons of fish.  You have to put in some time and this is just the beginning of the fall run, but rest assured it has started for Delaware.  The Indian River Inlet area has been producing with eels and live spot.   The action has been the best from boats for the most part, but long lining flies will produce catches with some time and patience.   The bluefish are mostly being caught further south by charters going for sea bass.  In fact one charter was pulling up half a sea bass from the blues hammering their catches on the retrieve.  Triggers and flounder have been in the mix fishing for sea bass.

Tautog fishing is still decent with some nice sized fish being produced at the bay sites, wrecks, haystacks and walls.  The surf has been quiet aside from spiny dogs, skates and some spotted hake or ling.  e have been fishing the beaches for the past three days from Cape Henlopen to Delaware Seashore State Park.  Nice day on the beaches after that heavy storm, but light on the catching action.  If you want a better chance of catching stripers in the surf, I would fish the beaches closest to the Indian River Inlet.  The surf temperatures have averaged sixty degrees and the Delaware and Inland bay temperatures are in the mid fifties.  We have a full moon this weekend.  The rest of this week into the weekend will be an incoming tide in the early  mornings, to the late morning by Sunday at the Indian River Inlet.  Just a reminder to let the big girls go so we have more breeders for the striped bass stocks.  Honestly with the fish consumption advisories for Delaware you shouldn’t eat more than two, eight ounce servings of striped bass a year from the Chesapeake & Delaware Canal to the mouth of the Delaware Bay, the contaminant of concern is PCBs.  Women of childbearing age and children should not consume any amount of these fish.  So basically one fish per year at twenty pounds is going to be the maximum for roughly four people.  Now you know why I catch and release, not just to help save a species, but to keep the toxins out of my body.  This goes for many areas of the east coast not just Delaware that these fish travel to and from.  It is sad when you think about it, I watch anglers argue all of the time about what they can catch and regulations imposed.  I never hear them complain about the fact the waters are so polluted it is not even safe to eat that much fish.  None of them ever mention trying to stop or control pollution, they just want to keep more fish.  When I think about all these advisories, the phrase don’t eat the yellow snow comes to mind.

Fish On!!

Rich King