Fisherman's Wharf Fishing Report August 18, 2004

Despite some bad forecasts, a couple of days off, and a lot of rain, this past week of fishing on board the All-Day boat Keen Lady IV has seen the best Flounder action of the year so far. Consistent catches of Flounder are all the buzz around the docks, and it seems that there is a spread of some nice fish around which should keep Flounder Fishermen quite happy in the days to come.

Good weather has allowed us to spend all of our time out in the ocean this past week and the Flounder have been hungry! It has not been uncommon for anglers to catch 15 or 20 Flounders by day’s end. Even though the majority of these fish have fallen short of the 17 &Mac184;" minimum size restriction, at times the keeper ratio has been excellent, and we have seen more limits of nice fish caught during this past week than the rest of the summer combined!

"T.M.T.C." is the best way to describe the action when these fish decide to turn on. This is a Captains term for "too many to count". We have landed several hundred Flounders in my last six trips to the ocean, and out of that we have managed to keep over 180 Flounders.

Some of the biggest Flounder of the year have been landed just this past week, with many of the fish weighing in over four and five pounds! Ruth Dengler from Bethlehem Pa. once again gets the honors of the biggest fish. Ruth landed several big Fluke this past weekend but the one that stands out the most would be her Doormat that tipped the scales at 9 pounds 4 oz. Congratulations Ruth!

There have been just too many nice fish to mention in this paragraph, however a few of the other citation fish weighed in last week would be; Keith Levitze of Media who landed a 4 lb. 2oz. Sea Bass, New Castle’s Bob Browna, with an 8 &Mac178; lb. Flounder, and Frank Timmons from Washington D.C. who also weighed in a 7 lb. 6oz. Citation sized Flattie! Ken Touffel, Donna Smith, Joe Lofinki and Earl Martis have all also landed Flounder weighing in at the five to six pound range in just the past few days.

If Flounder is your game, I can’t think of a better time to try than now, I do not expect this fishing to get much better than it has been for the past several days. I must warn you though that we are finding these fish in some deep water and it is not uncommon to rig up with as much as 12 ounces of lead. At times even more lead has been necessary when drifting conditions where tough.

As long as these Flounders continue to bite I will be trying to catch them. We are still seeing a nice variety of fish in our catch, however the Croakers have been in a little shallower water then where we have been catching most of our Flounder. I have not seen a Croaker on any of the All-Day trips this past week. Sea Bass have been coming over the rails in good numbers still, but most of these fish will fall short of the 12-inch limit. A couple of times when drifting just didn’t work, I have anchored the boat over some good bottom and have seen a real nice pick of Sea Bass with a good percentage of keepers.

If you are interested in catching Croakers, the Half-Day boat may be the best choice for now. The Half-Day trips have been seeing good numbers of Croakers on almost every trip. They are still catching these fish real close to home, allowing a maximum amount of fishing time for a Half-Day trip. Our Half-Day trips will continue to run daily until the end of September providing good opportunities for some good fishing.

For more information on trips Sailing out of the Wharf please check out our website at fishlewes.com or give us a call at (302) 645-TUNA.


Until next time Happy Fishing!
Capt. Rick Yakimowicz
fishing@fishlewes.com
Keen Lady IV