Just about every fisherman has a certain fish they like to catch. I am sure rockfish top may lists while flounder, croaker, and blues may be on the top of others.
This is all well and good so long as those fish are available, but trying to catch something that isn’t there is like hunting elephants in downtown Baltimore. Believe it or not, we still have fishermen in Delaware complaining about a lack of weakfish (and what’s worse, they are still trying to catch them).
No too long ago, I was fishing from a charter boat out of Solomons Island. We were trying to catch spot for rockfish bait, but everything that we hooked was just too big. My fellow anglers were tossing back big spot like they were worthless. I, on the other hand, put my spot on ice in the cooler. At the end of the day my friends went home with two rockfish while I had the same two rock plus a dozen nice, fat spot.
The abundance of any species will change with the seasons. Two years ago, we had plenty of big croaker in the Lewes and Rehoboth Canal, but last year you were lucky to find a croaker more than six inches long. I can remember loading the box with big blues while trolling spoons and tubes out of Chesapeake Beach. Today, any bluefish over five pounds is considered a big one.
On a recent head boat trip out of Ocean City, MD, the sea bass bite had slowed, but there were two to three-pound blues from the bottom to the surface. While they would hit the squid-baited double hook bottom rigs, it was much easier and faster to catch them with a bucktail or metal lure. I unfastened my bottom rig and snapped on a bucktail. The lure would not drop more than 20 feet before I was hooked up to a scrappy bluefish. In quick order I had my 10 bluefish limit and then went back to culling the occasional keeper sea bass from an abundance of shorts.
I could have had a lot more sport if I had used lighter tackle, but that is a no-no on a head boat. You want to employ tackle heavy enough to get your fish to the boat as quickly as possible, before it tangles your neighbor’s line. With some fish, like the ever-popular spiny dogfish, there is little you can do to keep them from running circles around the boat, picking up lines as they go. However, two to three-pound blues can be controlled and brought in quickly.
The other thing that can restrict your choices as to what is available is the size of your boat. Mine is a 16-foot Starcraft, and while I do fish the open Bay and ocean, it is only during the most favorable weather conditions. Otherwise, I am stuck in sheltered waters.
Here in Delaware, summer flounder are the primary target during the spring and summer. During the past few years we have watched as these fish moved further and further from shore. The best flounder fishing is now found 15 miles from Indian River Inlet, a good ways past the range of my boat.
This leaves me fishing Indian River and Bay, the Lewes and Rehoboth Canal, or the Delaware Bay well inside the Harbor of Refuge. Last year, I just about gave up on catching a flounder in these waters, but found some very good action on northern whiting close to the Outer Wall on the edge of the channel. I would still start the day drifting for flounder, but I didn’t waste too much time on the effort. Within an hour or two I would be drifting bloodworms along the wall and picking up some nice kings.
Back at the dock I would hear my fellow anglers complain about not catching any flounder, no matter how hard they tried and how many locations they fished. You would think that sometime during the day the thought would have occurred to them that the reason they didn’t catch any flounder was because there weren’t any flounder here. As for me, I agreed I didn’t catch any flounder, either.
Then I took my nice catch of kings home for dinner.
by Eric Burnley
Thursday, May 4, 2017 - 16:37
Just about every fisherman has a certain fish they like to catch. I am sure rockfish top may lists while flounder, croaker, and blues may be on the top of others.
This is all well and good so long as those fish are available, but trying to catch something that isn’t there is like hunting elephants in downtown Baltimore. Believe it or not, we still have fishermen in Delaware complaining about a lack of weakfish (and what’s worse, they are still trying to catch them).
No too long ago, I was fishing from a charter boat out of Solomons Island. We were trying to catch spot for rockfish bait, but everything that we hooked was just too big. My fellow anglers were tossing back big spot like they were worthless. I, on the other hand, put my spot on ice in the cooler. At the end of the day my friends went home with two rockfish while I had the same two rock plus a dozen nice, fat spot.
The abundance of any species will change with the seasons. Two years ago, we had plenty of big croaker in the Lewes and Rehoboth Canal, but last year you were lucky to find a croaker more than six inches long. I can remember loading the box with big blues while trolling spoons and tubes out of Chesapeake Beach. Today, any bluefish over five pounds is considered a big one.
On a recent head boat trip out of Ocean City, MD, the sea bass bite had slowed, but there were two to three-pound blues from the bottom to the surface. While they would hit the squid-baited double hook bottom rigs, it was much easier and faster to catch them with a bucktail or metal lure. I unfastened my bottom rig and snapped on a bucktail. The lure would not drop more than 20 feet before I was hooked up to a scrappy bluefish. In quick order I had my 10 bluefish limit and then went back to culling the occasional keeper sea bass from an abundance of shorts.
I could have had a lot more sport if I had used lighter tackle, but that is a no-no on a head boat. You want to employ tackle heavy enough to get your fish to the boat as quickly as possible, before it tangles your neighbor’s line. With some fish, like the ever-popular spiny dogfish, there is little you can do to keep them from running circles around the boat, picking up lines as they go. However, two to three-pound blues can be controlled and brought in quickly.
The other thing that can restrict your choices as to what is available is the size of your boat. Mine is a 16-foot Starcraft, and while I do fish the open Bay and ocean, it is only during the most favorable weather conditions. Otherwise, I am stuck in sheltered waters.
Here in Delaware, summer flounder are the primary target during the spring and summer. During the past few years we have watched as these fish moved further and further from shore. The best flounder fishing is now found 15 miles from Indian River Inlet, a good ways past the range of my boat.
This leaves me fishing Indian River and Bay, the Lewes and Rehoboth Canal, or the Delaware Bay well inside the Harbor of Refuge. Last year, I just about gave up on catching a flounder in these waters, but found some very good action on northern whiting close to the Outer Wall on the edge of the channel. I would still start the day drifting for flounder, but I didn’t waste too much time on the effort. Within an hour or two I would be drifting bloodworms along the wall and picking up some nice kings.
Back at the dock I would hear my fellow anglers complain about not catching any flounder, no matter how hard they tried and how many locations they fished. You would think that sometime during the day the thought would have occurred to them that the reason they didn’t catch any flounder was because there weren’t any flounder here. As for me, I agreed I didn’t catch any flounder, either.
Then I took my nice catch of kings home for dinner.
by Eric Burnley