Flounder takes the limelight here at the Wharf this past week. After several days of catching just a few Sea Bass and some Flounder I have made the switch and decided to run up into the Delaware Bay and concentrate on the Fluke. The results have been pleasantly surprising. Lou Bialota of Middletown Delaware gets the honors of catching the first of what I hope to be many, citation sized Flounder this year. Lou had a nice limit of Fluke on Friday including this doormat which weighed in at just less than nine pounds. We have had dozens of Flounder that have tipped the scales at four to five pounds and even a couple over six, but this is the biggest one yet.

Fishing for these Flounder has been a nice change of pace after spending the past several weeks anchoring over structure. It seems as though there are quite a few Flounder around for this time of the year right now, which is something that we have not been able to say over the past few years. These fish seem to be in a lot of different locations as well. Bill Young is pictured here with one of the many Flounder he caught with me just this past week. Bill limited out with flatties on both Tuesday and Friday proving that there really is quite a few Flounders around! We have seen some decent Flounder action on every trip this past week. With the exception of the weekend, limits have been common on each and every day. Over the weekend there were literally hundreds and hundreds of boats fishing both the Bay and the ocean. Saturday was not a good day to be a Flounder. Everyone on the water (except of course for the headboats) seemed to have good action, and landed a lot of nice fish. Pictured here with my mate Capt. Billy, is 15-year-old Samantha Hurt from Greensboro Md. Samantha took 1st place in the pool on Saturday with this nice 6 lb. Flounder. We had our moments on Saturday but I would have to call it just a shade above a sting. We caught a lot of fish, but for a big crowd there was a lot of 0’s and I knew of only one limit on the whole boat.

By Sunday things had taken a drastic turn for the worse. The wind came around from the northeast and steadily increased all day to a sustained 25 knots, by midday the fish had just shut down and it turned into a long long day. Monday was much of the same. We did manage to pick at a few flat fish but there were not many keepers. I have always said that Mother Nature has her own way of protecting her resources and she has certainly been watching the Flounder these last couple of days. This will change at the blink of the eye. With the amount of Flounder that are around right now all we need is for everything to fall into place and we will again see limit catches of nice fish.

Sea Bass have picked up a little from last weeks dismal report however this fishing is still way off from what we have been accustomed to seeing for this time of year. While I have not personally fished for Bass in almost a week, those that have no choice but to fish the ocean for Bass have seen the action a little better than that of the last couple weeks. Our best bet is to stick with drifting for now as there still seems to be little or no action over the wrecks. We will no doubt be seeing days with a nice mixed bag of Bass and Flounder in the near future while drifting over the “old grounds”. One of our best selling points for running out of the port of Lewes is the ability to fish in the Bay or the Ocean on any given day.

Night fishing went well on Saturday night. Capt. H.D. had a group with the extended 10 hr. trip that landed Blues up to eleven pounds. These fish were found about 40 miles from the lighthouse and were very cooperative, hitting bucktails and cut bait dashing through the lights all night long. Remember these trips will run on every Friday and Saturday night at 7:00 p.m. if you want the big Blues. Our Half-Day boat continues to sail daily and has also been seeing some Flounder.

I will continue to sail with the All-Day trips daily departing at 7:00 a.m. We will more than likely be concentrating on catching Flounder and or Sea Bass. There will be days that we will see the Bass mixed in and there will be days that we don’t. I take pride in trying to make the right decision as to fishing in an area where we have our best bet at catching fish. Some days it will be in the Bay and some days it will be in the Ocean. I wish I could tell you that we could go out and catch limits of Sea Bass but this is just not the case. We will have some nice catches of them though.

If you would like more information about trips Sailing out of the Wharf please give us a call at (302) 645-TUNA or check out our website.

Until Next Week Happy Fishing!

Capt. Rick Yakimowicz
Keen Lady IV
catchfish@verizon.net