We closed out the month of April this past weekend with some decent weather and some more good fishing. Hopefully the month of May will show us a little better weather than some of what was dished out to us for what seemed like the majority of the Spring. This is the time of year when fisherman are full of anticipation for all of the potential great fishing days that are in our region at this time of the year and it looks as though as long as we can get the breaks with Mother Nature the fishing scene will be right on target.

While we only have about a week left with our spring Tog Fishery, we also have Drumfish, Flounder and Stripers and it wont be long before we are able to land the Sea Bass! Striper action has been very inconsistent way up in the Bay where the best fishing had been over the past several weeks, however there is more and more reports of decent Linesiders landed along the beachfront, in the inlets and from the Surf. Drum fishing has now began and there have been several fish already landed up to about sixty pounds. This fishery will only get better over the next several weeks. The Flounder fishing given the time of year as far as I'm concerned is great, there has been a lot of small boat effort and a lot of fish already taken from the back Bay's, inlets, and all along the Lewes Rehoboth Canal. I have had many reports of good throwback action and several keepers landed as well, there are a lot of Flounder around right now.

We managed to get out three more trips this past weekend with my all-day trips fishing for the Tog, we got out on Friday, Saturday and then again on Sunday. Each trip met with varying degrees of success and weather but we did manage a respectable number of decent fish on each and every outing. In typical Tog fishing action patience and persistence were the key with these finicky feeders but most were rewarded with at least supper and in a many cases a limit with fish up to about eight pounds.

Fridays trip started out pretty decent right out of the gate. We had a steady pick with mostly keepers most of the morning, not red hot fishing but they added up. By mid day we only needed a few more for a boat limit but the fish seemed to shut off and it took us over two hours of waiting to land just five more fish. We got them in about ten minutes when they started biting again!

Saturday turned out to be our toughest day, with a fairly decent crowd on board folks had a difficult time with the strong running current and the fish just didn't add up for us the way they had been doing by the end of the day. Even though we did manage a lot of decent fish and several folks were lucky enough to land a limit on Saturday, there were others that were wondering what window they were looking out of and ended the day with a keeper shut out or maybe just one fish. I think the strong running ebb tide was our biggest enemy, at one point anglers were pressing up with as much as 12 and 14 ounces of lead in just forty feet of water to keep their line from screaming away with the current.

For Sunday's trip I was very apprehensive about the strong running tides that we had been seeing around the mouth of the Delaware Bay so I opted to fish out in the Ocean in hopes of getting away from the hard running current. It was a good move! I fished several wrecks down the beachfront in depths from forty to seventy feet of water and not only were the fish there, they were hungry! Action was the course of the day with Tog biting pretty much every stop that I made. There was just on problem; the vast majority of the fish were falling shy of the required size limit. We persevered, we threw back a lot of fish, and ultimately we won out. The Tog did add up for us and we once again saw just about everyone on the boat end up with a limit or near limit catch with fish up to about six pounds. We also had a bonus catch of a couple very nice Codfish and we released several nice Sea Bass and also saw several small Sea Bass proving that they too are now moving onto these structures. By the end of the day we had used up all of our fresh bait and actually had the fish biting on the salted clams we had in reserve!

We really do have a lot of great fishing to look forward to right now and all indications are that we won't be disappointed. We do only have one more week for the Tautog, our spring season with these fish will close the middle of next week. After that we will be fishing for Flounder or Drumfish until the season opener with the Sea Bass on Sunday May 22nd. Less than three weeks away! We are still trying to figure out exactly what we will be doing for the opening day of Sea Bass, it is likely we will be running two boats in case we get slammed with fisherman eager to get back out on the Bass. Any special trips will be posted on the link from the home page.

If you would like any more information about trips sailing out of the Wharf or you would like to book a private charter for bottom fishing or Drum fishing on the Lewestown Lady please give us a call at (302) 645-8862.

Until Next Week Happy Fishing!

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