Fishing reports always seem to come pretty easy to me when the fishing has been good and that is what I have seen over the past week. Good to excellent fishing! Variety catches have been on the menu; you really don’t know what you’re going to bring up when you drop your baits to the bottom and get the bites.

Last week I had reported some of the best and biggest Flounder fishing of the season, unfortunately I couldn’t repeat that this week. Fluke numbers where way down compared to last week however we have still been seeing Flounders every day and still catching some big ones just not the big numbers. We had quite a bit of wind throughout most of the week along with a full moon. Now we are seeing Croakers just about everywhere we go where just a few days ago there were none. Fish are most definitely on the move with the hard running tides accompanying the moon.

Sea Bass are also starting to show up now in places that they haven’t been all summer. While most of these fish are falling shy of the required twelve-inch minimum, there are times that we see mostly nice keepers. If I only knew the key to catching all big ones we would have it made. It is starting to look good for the fall Sea Bass run though. We may even see some anchoring in the near future over wrecks or reefs targeting just the Bass.

It seems as though the summer season is winding down rapidly. Crowds have dropped of to just barely the minimum size load, it’s almost been like a private charter on a 110 foot boat through the week making for some very comfortable fishing. We just barely made double digits with fisherman several times over the past week. Not necessarily good for business but certainly good for fishing!

With the amount of fish that are around now there is almost no limit to our options for catching fish in just about every weather situation as long as the winds don’t blow too hard. Mostly all of my fishing has been in the Ocean or in the mouth of the Bay and drifting has been the best. There was a few times this past week where we literally drifted for miles catching fish the whole time Croakers, Bass, Blues and Fluke. We have even seen an abundance of small Trout. Even though none of the Trout kept, it was nice to see them.

I expect to see variety fishing like this for several more weeks some days of course will better than others, and even I don’t know what to expect on any given day as far as what species of fish we might see most of. As I stated earlier Croakers are now everywhere and you can catch them most of the time. It seems like they bite the best when nobody wants them and they are hard to come by when you need them the most. It is very frustrating seeing fifteen to eighteen inch Croakers being thrown back some days when at times you can’t even buy a bite. A typical example, yesterday we drifted for over two miles catching literally everything, and a lot of nice fish were thrown back. Today 8/29 we couldn’t find any cooperating Croakers and had to settle for a mangy pick on Sea Bass and Flounder. Almost everyone on the boat would have loved to see the action with the Croakers but is was not to be. Go figure.

We will continue to run seven days a week at 7:00 a.m. with the all-day trips targeting whatever we can catch, half day trips will also be running for several more weeks. Our half–day trips have been seeing outstanding results with some very nice Croakers just a few miles from the inlet making for plenty of fishing time with the short trip. If you would like any more information about trips sailing out of the Wharf or you would like to make a reservation for one of the offshore Tuna trips please give us a call at (302) 645-TUNA.

Until Next Week Happy Fishing!

Capt. Rick Yakimowicz
Thelma Dale V
catchfish@verizon.net