A strange year for fishing

It has been a rough summer for those who enjoy catching and keeping summer flounder. The water temperature on the bottom at the Old Grounds has been as cold as 40 degrees, and when you add that to the increased size limit of 17.5 inches, even the top flounder-catching charter boats have been hard-pressed to find more than a dozen keepers per trip. Lately, dolphin aka mahi have moved to the inshore grounds, and that has helped the charter fishing. 

Exactly why the bottom water temperature has been so cold is something I do not quite understand, but the surface temperature has been in the 70-degree range, and boats targeting Spanish mackerel, bonito and bluefish are finding them at Fenwick Shoal and other inshore structure. The water temperature in Delaware Bay has been more to a flounder’s liking, as some excellent catches have come from there. Don’t get me wrong; I do fishing reports every day, and I have yet to record a limit of flounder for anyone since the increased size limit.

Indian River Inlet has had the most consistent fishing of anywhere along our coast. Blues as heavy as 10 pounds or more were running through there on incoming water on a daily basis for several weeks. At last report, they were still going through, just not every day. Lures such as a white bucktail with a white plastic worm or a silver metal spoon were the top attractors.

As mentioned in a previous article, some impressive flounder have been caught from the inlet. True, you have to weed through a lot of little ones, but if you end up with a 10- or even a 13-pounder, the work will be worthwhile. Live minnows, Gulp! or in the case of the 13-pounder, a small piece of squid on a spot rig will all prove attractive to a flounder.

Striped bass have been caught on a regular basis at night by dedicated jetty jockeys who are using live eels or drifting sand fleas. Live eels require some getting used to. They have a tendency to coil up on the hook unless you get them in the water rather quickly. Storing them is also a hassle. However, they are like candy to stripers. 

I find drifting sand fleas a much easier technique. I use a circle hook that I put two fleas on and then cast up current. Let the current carry the bait in and around the rocks until a striper takes it, and when the line comes tight, the fish is on. You can walk the rocks or sidewalk, or pick a spot and stay there as you wait for a fish to pass by.

For whatever reason, there seem to be more and larger stripers around this year than in previous seasons. Normally, we get a shot of big fish in the spring and fall and have to be satisfied with small males all summer. Not this year. We have had some big stripers well over the slot of 28 to 31 inches, and some fish that fell in that range as well. 

Back in the day, I caught tiderunner trout drifting sand fleas at night at Indian River Inlet.

Even the surf has been productive. Spot, croaker and kings have given us surf-fishermen something to catch since spring. I have seen some good numbers of kings caught on bloodworms or Fishbites from just about any beach you can name. So far, I have been unable to be at the right beach at the right time, but I plan to keep on trying.

The same trio has been caught from the fishing pier at Cape Henlopen State Park and from the head boats running from Angler ‘s Dock in Lewes.

We are also seeing more and larger weakfish that most Delawareans call trout. The possession limit remains one and the size limit is still 13 inches, but much bigger fish keep being caught. These larger trout usually come from jetties or other hard structure and are caught by folks fishing for something else.  

I still think we are a long way from the heydays we had back from the late 1960s until the crash of the 1990s, but it’s a start.

As far as offshore fishing, most Delaware boats target meat fish. When the weather allows them to reach the deep, they do pretty well with tilefish, but tuna have been a bit scarce so far this year. There have been some good catches, but nothing consistent.

Over last weekend down in Ocean City, Md., the Billfisher released 40 white marlin on Sunday. The Coastal Fisherman reported while that was the high boat for the day, many other boats were in the double digits for releases.