Windy weekend and sea witch is on town

The wind has been ridiculous the past few days, well, mostly for the past month.  When it isn’t pouring rain, the trees are raining leaves.  The autumn colors look great, the nights are crisp, and the days when the sun is out are decent, especially if you can get out of the wind.  Today was no exception to windy surf, and choppy seas.  Hopefully tomorrow will be calmer, until Sunday when it cranks back up.   Today was roughly fourteen mph winds, and tomorrow should be about the same or calmer.  Sunday it will be over twenty mph.  The water at the point looks like shaken Yoo Hoo, the beaches further south are like a heavy latte, stirred not shaken.  Either way bait will work well for fish, at least they can smell.  Little bluefish were in the surf today on cut bunker from fillets and mullet chunks.  We also hit a plethora of dogfish and skates.  The spotted hake action at herring point beach was decent, with a few nice sized specimens.  You can skip the fishbites now, the water temperatures have dropped dramatically in the past six days.  The surf is averaging sixty four degrees, masseys landing was just under fifty eight degrees this morning as was the Delaware Bay in Lewes at the buoy.   That gets everyone excited for striped bass and bigger bluefish.  Right now it is just shorty striped bass action and those tiny annoying snipper blue fish, a.k.a the bait stealers.  There have been a few nice pound and half blues caught here and there but random.  The Indian River Inlet has seen some blue fish action on the incoming tide, which will be during the morning into the afternoon the next few days.

I fished with Dave Okonewski of Diamond State Tackle today and Scott Egbert at the point on the ocean side.  It was windy, a little chilly when the clouds blocked the sun, but we were catching dogfish and skates on cut bait.  We decided after a while to move to Herring Point Beach.  We were demoing Diamond State Tackle rigs, and people dropped by to check out the gear.  Herring Point beach was much nicer, as soon as we arrived there, the sun stayed out the rest of the day.  A seagull next to me yawned or appeared to yawn and that of course got me yawning, go figure.  Founda cool bottle bottom from an old coke bottle that was stamped Salisbury MD.  I rescued a horseshoe crab from certain death by a few seagulls that were about to turn it into a meal.  I figured as much as that is breaking the cycle of the food chain, the birds could go terrorize the board walk for food this weekend.  A lot of people are in town for the Sea Witch festival.  I picked up trash like I always do, but today I needed it to make a costume for the parade tomorrow, to promote clean beaches, for once I didn’t find a Mylar balloon.  We rigged back up at Herring Point beach and immediately started back on the skate and dogfish streak.  Bluefish made an appearance on modified mullet rigs, and spotted hake or ling started hitting Scott’s rigs like crazy.  Must have been that ultra light bass rod he was using and the Diamond State Tackle top and bottom pill float rigs.  We fished until the dolphins showed up and started hammering fish.  It was like a sea world show out there for about a half hour and then fishing shut down.  Taking a cue from the dolphins, we decided lunch would be a good thing and headed out at Gordons Pond entrance.  The air compressor at Gordons Pond it appears is shutdown for the season, the air hoses were not there.  We headed to route 1 hit Casa Dileos for pizza by the slice and then Wawa for air.   I bid my goodbyes to the boys, thanked them for the demo day, and look forward to the next time.

Tautog action has been decent when the boats can get out there, tomorrow should not be too bad, just a little bumpy.  Sunday will be much rougher.  Some triggers and flounder have made an appearance during tog trips and even during a few seabass outings in deeper water.  You can find puffers still in the surf and Delaware bay on bloodworms.  Bluefish are larger in the bay, on spoons and bucktails. Catching sand fleas is getting harder now that the temperatures are dropping, that will end soon when they dig in deep for the winter.  The guys that dropped by today said they saw an eagle eating a fish on a log near the point today.   Crabbing is about non existent but some are still around in the shallower waters during the day.  Clamming is always good if you can stand the wind and chest deep water in waders.  I didn’t get to see the eclipse last evening at sunset the cloud cover was too heavy, but Cameron McVeigh Designs did manage some nice shots.  Hope everyone has a safe and fun weekend.  We will see you in the sandbox.

Fish On!!

Rich King