Rodgers: Flounder bites slower than in recent years in Delaware Bay
OK, I warned you — home from the mountains of Pennsylvania and, predictably, the sea breeze along the Delaware Bay is in full form! Still mornings are transformed to choppy, white-capped seas as the south-east wind follows the flood tide up from the Atlantic.
For all of you fishing Delaware Bay, I apologize.
Certainly, there are a surprising amount of folks fishing the big bay these days. Tough sledding on the flounder front down in the ocean has motivated local private and charter boats to try their luck at plucking some of the historically abundant triggerfish from the bay junk piles.
The Shears reef sites have been particularly good, but the triggers have also been found in other locations. The walls in the Harbor of Refuge have held some of these tasty and sporty fish (and, it says right here, that you can keep some of these) as well.
Triggers have small mouths so using a small hook such as a size six long shank can get you more hookups. They like sand fleas, or small pieces of clam or squid. Fishing the structure around periods of less tidal flow is also a big help.
Capt. Carey Evans on the Lewes charter boat Grizzly reports that he has had several nice trips up in the bay with mixed bag catches of triggers, kingfish and some flounder.
“Some” flounder seems to be the word, as the flounder bite in the approaches to the Delaware Bay have been much slower than recent years.
“We have seen a few decent trips with the flounder when everything is just right,” said Capt. Rick Yakimowicz on the Fisherman’s Wharf all day headboat out of Lewes. “But it doesn’t seem as is though there are nearly as many around as there have been over the past several years, making it much more difficult to catch them unless conditions are just right.”
It will be interesting to see if this brings any pressure to find out just what is going on with the Delaware Bay.
It’s no secret to anyone with any experience fishing the bay that things have certainly changed, and not for the better. As long as folks were still catching down in the ocean, well, there really isn’t a whole lot to shout about, I guess, unless of course you live or have (or, more likely, had) a business located along the bay that depends on fishing.
It will be interesting to see how things play out.
Kingfish appear to have started to sag out of the bay toward the ocean. More and more are showing along the ocean beaches. Small croakers are also starting to show (and I mean in the 7-8-inch range) so perhaps the kings don’t like the competition.
Regardless, the best action for the kings is down in the Shears region just outside of Lewes. Bloodworms, either the real deal or the artificial variety, small pieces of clams or squid do the trick for the kings.
There are plenty of trout around, relatively speaking. Dr. Mark McDaniel tagged along to land his one-fish limit of a nice 5-pounder on a recent trip, releasing plenty of other legal trout.
Offshore anglers are still scratching away at the tuna fish, both on local lumps and along the canyons. Certainly, no mean feat in today’s economy, I know, but if you can possibly avoid fishing the weekends it helps, as it appears that every spot in the Old Grounds and every lump along the twenty-fathom line is covered with boats.
And speaking of offshore, Capt. HD Parsons had a good trip to the deep on his last tile fishing headboat trip, doing very well with both golden and gray line tilefish.
If you’ve never gone that’s a neat trip to try.
Hopefully, it’s just the cold bottom water that is holding up the flounder down in the ocean. Sorry about bringing the wind back from Pennsylvania, and good luck, good fishing this week!
Reports, comments or questions to captjackrodgers@comcast.net