If high winds, heavy seas, and lots of rain are your thing than you missed a good week for fishing. If you are one of the unlucky ones that did fish with me over this past week I am truly sorry for your luck and I hope that you remember to use that rain check (wind check) for a much nicer day!

Mother Nature has played a cruel joke on us over these past couple of weeks and as far as the fish catching end of the joke goes, this has been no laughing matter. Since my last report I regret to say that we really haven’t caught enough fish to feed a sick cat. Then again we haven’t had a good opportunity to try either. Heavy winds have dominated the mid-atlantic coast now for over a week and these winds have made catching fish next to impossible. There was a light at the end of the tunnel though and I am proud to report that my last two days on the water have been much much better!

We have had several really bad trips over this past week. It started with the special Tog trip last Wednesday. We never caught a Blackfish, and the six foot waves rolling into the lower end of the Delaware Bay chased us back to the dock before mid day with just a couple of Croakers and a Blowfish to show. The rest of the week proved to be even worse with the wind and waves just getting progressively stronger as the week wore on. Each and every attempt that was made was a bust and ended up returning to the docks early.

Monday 10/17 was the first day in a week that I was able to make a good day of it. Even though the winds were still blowing, the direction had changed around to the west, knocking down most of the big swells and allowing us to actually fish and catch something. Sea Bass and small Porgies were the catch of the day. Even though we didn’t fill boxes up with these fish it was nice to see them actually biting again. Top hooks would end up with about a dozen nice keeper Bass and it went downhill from there. Tuesday was more like we were fishing again. Most anglers walked away with close to a limit of nice sized Sea Bass proving that all we needed was a break from this ugly weather to turn things around.

We have finally started to see an anticipated drop in water temperatures. Ocean temps have fallen about four degrees on the surface in just the past few days and inshore the temperature has also dropped. The surface temp in the mouth of the Bay this morning was almost a full 8 degrees cooler than just last week. Cooler evenings have played a role in this drop, in the same area just this afternoon it was back up to 70 degrees. As the days get shorter these temperatures will continue to drop and hopefully the Stripers will start to cooperate. Not a whole lot of effort has been put forth in fishing for these fish due to recent weather but any day now some big linesiders should be hitting the docks.

I would like to remind you that this year we will continue sailing seven days a week at 7:00 a.m. with the regular Full- Day trips. Just about all efforts now will be wreck fishing for Sea Bass. These trips will go on until the 18th of December. We will also be running an 8-hour trip exclusively for Stripers every day until after Christmas. These trips are scheduled to depart the docks at 8:00 a.m.

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 our special trips, please give us a call at (302) 645-TUNA.

Until Next Week Happy Fishing!

Capt. Rick Yakimowicz
Fisherman’s Wharf
catchfish@verizon.net