Weekend Outlook For Fishing

The inland bays peaked to almost fifty-eight degrees during the week.  This morning we are looking at forty-nine degrees and peaking to fifty-five degrees.  This trend will continue for a few days and may drop a few degrees with today’s rain and frontal system.  The Delaware bay is holding around fifty degrees in Lewes, even up north in the river at fifty-one degrees earlier this morning.  These are perfect striped bass temperatures.  There are a lot of migratory fish showing up in the Delaware bay and river.  As much as many hate to hear this the commercial guys are getting their limits fast of large striped bass.  Bunker is abundant in the Delaware bay for the netters and fresh bunker is at all the bait shops now.  Augustine beach has seen some great short striped bass action and even fat white perch, all caught on bloodworms.  Bunker chunks are catching large bass for the boats up north in the river and bay.  There has been some decent short striped bass action down at Masseys landing at night.   Bloodworms are the best baits but speck rigs will hook up as well.  Much better conditions for fishing the last few days and night-time has been the right time.  Especially along the Delaware Bay beaches.  There are some keeper sized males in the mix of all the short striped bass.  The Broadkill river has decent action once you find the fish, even from land.

Some small blues are in the bass schools, which are up and down the beaches hitting bloodworms.  White swim shads and flies are still working for the casters.  Fly anglers are doing well with the white flies, and the overcast days like today are better for brighter colors.  Some days the fish are picky and others they will hit anything you throw at them.  Tip and bottom rigs with two aught hooks have been pulling short bass tow at a time using bloodworms in the surf.  Lot of skates and dogfish in the surf hitting cut baits.  The dogfish are decent sized spiny dogs.

Freshwater action has been good for crappie, large mouth, and pickerel are on fire.  The saltwater fly anglers of Delaware club has a pickerel tournament this Saturday.  Good luck to all the teams.  Favorite team name this year … Don’t pickerel your friend’s nose.  Of course that would be the Dammeyer boys, Matt and Micah.

The Indian river inlet has been short striped bass action and is best at night.  There is the occasional keeper in the mix, right on the twenty-eight inch mark.

Trout season started for streams and rivers in Delaware over the weekend. DNREC stocked several locations last week, even with a few golden trout. Many anglers were worried the swollen rivers and creeks from all of that rain on Friday would turn off the bite and wash the fish downstream. Fortunately trout are smart enough to stick to the sides and stay in calmer eddies until the water clams down. They are trout despite being farm raised they are accustomed to fast-moving water. The anglers that did get out on opening day did rather well despite the conditions. It was probably advantageous since many who usually wade fish could not get into the water for a couple of days. Not a good idea to wade in rushing waters. That made for fewer people fishing which if you have ever seen opening day it can rather comical. People shoulder to shoulder standing in the water trying to fish. Something many of us try to avoid, and wait until the weekdays to get in our time. Now that the water has calmed down anglers are limiting out in no time. Using small spinners, wax worms and even speck rigs. My favorite is the Panther Martin spinners, the small ones, and even a tiny Mepps gold spinner. I grew up using nothing but Mepps, if you use them right you can catch anything.

Have a great weekend.  It is moving day for DSF we are finally headed to the Amazon servers so we can keep the site up and running all of the time.  We have outgrown all the server farms out there on the interwebs.  Thank you everyone for your patience, it took a few weeks to rebuild the entire website as well.

Fish On!

Rich King