Fishing: October big blues just around the corner

“If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music he hears, however measured or far away.” ― Henry David Thoreau

“Even school can’t hurt October.” ― Robert Ruark, "The Old Man and the Boy"

It hasn’t happened yet this year, but hopefully it will soon.

That gorgeous, “Chamber of Commerce” weather will roll in on the tail end of some cold front dropping down from Canada. The sky will be swept clear of humidity and blaze forth in Kodachrome blue clarity. For the surf anglers, this is the time of year.

It hasn’t happened yet, but hopefully soon there will be blues bigger than the bait.  Happy, lonely people will be scattered out in the autumn afternoons all up and down the lower Delaware coast. A big part of the ritual is the tradition, as surf casters stand in the tracks of those before them, the folks that helped them hook their first fall blues before they discovered that, really, it was the other way around. 

Often they helped prep baits with liver-spotted hands, making it look easy, and tying on rigs purchased at Mac’s or Herbs or Old Inlet. 

Back then we used cumbersome metal and braid, and big chartreuse floats. When cast, the rig would helicopter out before falling to sea like a pyramid drug lunar landing splashdown, big floats whirling before landing with a satisfying “chunk” in the Atlantic. 

It hasn’t happened yet, but hopefully soon anglers will wind in the slack after they cast and wait, watching, hoping for the whipping blast of a blue on its way to North Carolina chasing the mullet and peanut bunker. 

It hasn’t happened yet, but the promise of the autumn rite of tog fishing (or, more properly, catching keepers) has boats plying local waters. The water temperatures are still high due to the unseasonably warm temperatures, so the bulk of the tog landed are “shorts," but that’s no reason to not go fishing.  There is still a lot of good “catching” going on.

“We’ve seen some really good mixed bag fishing,” said Capt. Rick Yakimowicz on the all-day headboat out of Fisherman’s Wharf in Lewes. “There have been plenty of trips where anglers have landed as many as 10 different species of fish. We’ve been catching plenty of blues, trout, porgies, sea bass and triggerfish.”

It hasn’t happened yet, but the sands of time are running towards sea bass opening back up again at the end of the month. The good bass fishing experienced prior to the closing of the season has anglers chomping at the bit to get back in the saddle.  t can’t come too soon for most bottom bouncers.

It hasn’t happened yet, but soon. October’s here. It’s time.

Reports, comments or questions to captjackrodgers@comcast.net