The Delaware Bay is not dead

If you listen to some pundits you might believe the Delaware Bay is a vast wasteland that needs a tremendous amount of work to rise from the dead. Some of the naysayers have a financial reason for constantly telling us the sky is falling. They work for a nonprofit that bills itself as a conservation organization,  and they need to convince as many people as they can that the bay is bad off so the money will keep on keeping on.

The ones I really love are the folks who consider themselves fishermen, and when they don’t catch anything they claim there are no fish left in the bay. Some of these people are still waiting for the trout to return, sort of like Linus and the Great Pumpkin at Halloween.

The truth is while the Delaware Bay (and just about every waterway in the country) could be better, it is a long way from dead. Last week, Doug Elliott and I fished the bay from 0700 to about noon, and we caught quite a variety of fish. Beginning at the Outer Wall, we tried plugging, and while I did have a couple of hits, nothing came tight. Then we moved to Reef Site 8 and after trying a few spots we got into steady action. Using bloodworms for bait on small circle hooks, we caught porgies, blues, blowfish, black sea bass and one trout. All of these fish were small.

We moved again, this time to the Ice Breakers. We drifted toward the inside of the Outer Wall and once again began catching fish. The first fish was a decent-size king and it went into the box with the hope that more would soon enjoy a refreshing ice bath. We began catching kings at a reasonable pace along with dog sharks, one skate and one ling. The blues were here in greater number than at Site 8, and I even caught a double header.

Around noon, the wind began to pick up out of the south and our drift stopped. The wind against the current also began to build some impressive seas, especially for two old men in a 16-foot boat. The run back to Roosevelt Inlet was a bit damp, but all hands arrived safely. When our fish were counted out at the cleaning table, we had eight kings, plenty for two good meals.

A dead bay does not produce eight species of fish with many of them juveniles. Young fish do not fare well in a dead sea, so the condition of the bay has to be pretty good.

In addition, many limits of flounder were caught from the bay in 2015 by anglers who took the time and energy to learn how to fish structure at the reef sites. My beloved croaker arrived in June and were available all summer and into the fall. I had excellent catches of big croaker out of the Lewes and Rehoboth Canal.

Let’s not forget the tog and sheepshead caught along the Outer and Inner walls. I suspect we will have decent rockfish action in these same locations when the coastal migratory stock moves past later in the fall.

No, Virginia, the sky is not falling, and the Delaware Bay is far from dead. While I am certain we would have more fish if the cooling water for refineries and power plants did not kill a few million small fish every year, remember, all of these plants were in operation when we had that fantastic run of big trout.

So please keep fishing the Delaware Bay and on those days Mama told you about when the fish box comes in empty, don’t blame the bay.

Fishing report

Fall is in the air and the fish are on the move. The last report we had indicated the best of the croaker fishing has moved to the mouth of the bay near the Eights and the Valley. Some flounder have been caught from the same location.

Croaker and flounder have been caught in the ocean out of Indian River Inlet. The biggest croaker have been closer to shore around the Croaker Canyon and Reef Site 10. Some flounder fishermen trying Site 10 said the croaker were so thick they could not get a bait past them and down to the flounder.

Farther offshore, flounder remain in good supply at the Old Grounds and the rough bottom between B and A buoys. Limit catches have been made by those who jig with bucktails tipped with Gulp! Nuclear Chicken, squid or strips of fish. More keeper sea bass have been caught at the Old Grounds, which is a welcome surprise.

Surf fishing has improved with the arrival of small blues and kings. Expect this to continue as the water cools.

Eric Burnley is a Delaware native who has fished and hunted the state from an early age.  Since 1978 he has written countless articles about hunting and fishing in Delaware and elsewhere along the Atlantic Coast. Eric can be reached at Eburnle@aol.com.