The fishing is never really as good as it was yesterday. And by the same token it should always be better tomorrow! Anyone that has fished for any amount of time has certainly heard one of these statements. That doesn’t make it any better when you are being told this as you are standing at the rail waiting for a bite.

This past week has shown us both sides of these statements.

There is a strong probability that were it not for the production of just two weeks ago that I would have called this past week’s performance very good. I guess you just get spoiled. No we didn’t have over thirty citation-sized fish this week, in fact we only weighed in three. And no we didn’t limit out the whole boat some days, but a lot of limits of fish were landed. What we did do however is continue to consistently catch nice Flounder. Even on a few of the tougher days we managed to land a good number of nice fish.

I have plenty of excuses for the fishing this past week and actually they are legitimate excuses. It seemed like the wind was almost always opposing the current giving us little or no drift or when we did drift it was too fast. It was always something. Did I even mention the moon? That’s fishing. We did manage to avoid the weekend sting however and in fact most folks that fished over this past weekend had a very nice trip. Some even caught a limit!

With the exception of just a couple of days, pool fish have still been in the five to seven pound class. Hey you can’t always catch ten-pound fish! It was a nice ride a couple of weeks back but now we are back to reality. And Reality has not been too bad. The numbers are still up. We have managed to catch hundreds of Flounder in the past seven days and we have also been seeing more Sea Bass than we have seen all summer. Just a couple of days ago I had one lucky angler that spent most of the day fishing with short leaders and baits and surprised me by actually landing double digits in keeper sized Bass. We don’t always see this many Bass in fact some days we hardly see any. I do see a trend though and I think that some of this mixed bag fall fishing will become more common.

The dynamics of our fishing is definitely changing. We are starting to see tons of Throwbacks at times, and we are also starting to mix in lots of Sharks, Skates and Sea Robbins where just a couple of weeks ago all we caught was Fluke with a minimal amount of “junk fish” we couldn’t even catch a Shark for bait. This is a sure sign that fish are on the move. I am surprised that we have not seen any of the Croakers that are moving up and down the beach as of yet. I know they are close and it shouldn’t be too long before we see some of these fish mixed in our catch also.

Half-Day trips continue to bring in plenty of Croaker however it is spottier now than it has been since the middle of July. When they bite it is super fishing with Croaks up to 17” in length and lots of them, but there are times that these fish have been coming up off of the bottom and just don’t cooperate with the bottom bouncers. Half-day trips will continue to target Croakers for several more weeks providing excellent opportunities to catch them close to home.

On the Offshore front Tuna fishing has turned on with consistency. Charter Boats have been catching nice Tuna both Trolling and on the Chunk. These Long fins were caught aboard the Lewestown Lady with Capt. Bennett at the helm just a couple of days ago. If Tuna is your game this is peak time. Capt. Benny has several dates open with 12hr. as well as overnight dates available. These Long fins were caught trolling on just a twelve-hour trip.

If you would like more information about trips sailing out of the Wharf or you would like to book a charter or reserve a spot for one of our upcoming 22hr. trips for Tuna on the head boat please give us a call at (302) 645-TUNA.

Until Next Week Happy Fishing!

Capt. Rick Yakimowicz

catchfish@verizon.net