The Stories Of The Catch Are Just As Fun

The best part of fishing are the stories, you just never know what madness will ensue during a normal day of fishing.  Today the reel friend surf fishing crew are fishing at Cape Henlopen today.  Sue Sokira text, call me you get a chance you have to hear this story.  I call, she answers the phone … “So Jason Duncan is reeling in a skate and it has a yellow braided lie snagged on it.  None of us have yellow braided line.  Hey I think there is a fish on here!  Richard Haas and I  start hand lining to pull in the line and fish.  To our surprise we rescued a twenty-eight inch black drum to the dinner table.”  Moral of the story is sometimes catching skates is a good thing.  They saw dolphins and birds going crazy near the point several times today. The water was brown with sand and blood from a feeding frenzy.  Dolphins like bluefish too.   Mike Cooper was running around in the surf in his socks and sneakers to make sure his bluefish didn’t get away.  He took the hit so to speak for a nice dinner tonight.   We all have to make sacrifices sometimes to get that fish.  I won’t even tell you what a friend of mine just told his boss to get the day off work.

The Henlopen pier reported a nice flounder that was snagged on a spoon yesterday.  The angler dragged the spoon along the bottom and it picked up an eighteen inch flounder.  Today during the dead low tide in dirty water four flounder were caught on gulp.  Everyone was shocked to see flounder in that low water.  I figure they are escaping the bluefish that are eating everything in sight.  Last year we watched two guys in a boat next to us in the Harbor of Safe Refuge trying to catch flounder.  They would hook something then the line would go slack.  They looked at us and said they couldn’t figure out what was going on, so we cast a line near them and yanked a three-foot blue fish out from under their boat.  I said you are on top of a school of these they are eating your rigs up, switch up gear.  They looked at each other ad that fish twice and said we don’t have gear for that, we want flounder and left.

Northern puffers or blowtoads (chicken of the sea) are still i the surf and the inland bays.  The oceanic pier is seeing them as well.  They are hitting bloodworms and fishbites.  Even small pieces of cut bait on top and bottom rigs.  There have been some random kingfish catches.  Mostly everyone is going for bluefish, for the fact they are the main catch, it’s a ton of fun, and they are destroying the smaller rigs anyway.  John at the Oceanic Fishing Pier text me … ” Slowed down a little during the day “weather “. A guy had a forty inch blue fish all the way to the pier, but it straightened the hook.  Still small rock, puffers, skate, tog, and one red drum off a minnow.  We have live sand fleas”

The short striped bass action is fun around the inlet and area beaches.  Bluefish showed up at the Indian River inlet last night and that was a blast for many anglers.  You just never know when these fish will make an appearance.  Like we said earlier, a friend from Lewes was catching them in Frisco, North Carolina.   They are as far up as New York.  Yesterday a friend said he was surprised the birds aren’t working the bluefish heavily.  My best guess as to why is last year we found a seagull in a bluefish belly.  They will eat anything during those blitzes, including each other.   The tuatog action for boats has been pretty hot on ocean and bay structure.

Fish On!

Rich King

Indian River Inlet tide …