You will hear no real complaints from me about the fishing we have been having here at the Wharf this past week. Even though our last week was nowhere near as good as we had been seeing for the couple weekÂ’s prior, the numbers are still up and we managed to have some real moments of greatness with our Flounder fishing in the last seven days.

Mother Nature always has and always will do a much better job at protecting her precious resources than any fishery management plan that we could possibly put into place and she was our biggest enemy over the past week. A few days this past week conditions got the best of us and we had either too little or too much drift to make things work in our favor. When everything fell in place though we continued to put impressive numbers of nice Flounder in the Boat!

I have to stick with my guns however; so far this year everything is shaping up to be a banner year for catching Flounder. There is a lot of fish around and the overall size on the average has been pretty good. Both the coastal waters as well as up inside the Delaware Bay have been showing good numbers with nice Flatties and we have a long way to go with this 09’ Flounder season. Every day I get reports of nice fish being caught over a forty-mile stretch from the upper reaches of the Delaware Bay and up and down the Delaware, Maryland, and New Jersey coastlines. When everything clicks Flounder are being caught. I often say if you are really serious about getting some fish you need to fish three day’s in a row because yesterday and tomorrow are always the best days. This was never more obvious than it was today. As I write this I am out with one of the nicest weekday crowds of the year and yesterday was a great day, today’s forecast worried me a little though, light west winds were in the picture with nearly all day of an incoming tide. Not much drift I thought…. Well here we are it’s blowing about twenty out of the northeast and we are drifting nearly 2 knots out of the gate. Hmmmm. How could this be?? Mother Nature protecting her Flounder I guess? You certainly can’t blame it on the weatherman it’s never his fault. This doesn’t look like it’s going to be a big today day but tomorrow should be Better! This is how it’s been we don’t get ‘em every day and you never really know when it’s going to happen but when conditions are right it’s pretty good fishing and more often than not we have been winning the game.

As some of you well know our Fluking has been pretty decent so far this season and I expect to continue having success with these fish for several more weeks. Along with the Fluke we have also been seeing a smattering of keeper sized Sea Bass when we fish in the Ocean and a few Snapper Blues when we fish up in the Delaware Bay. While the majority of the time has been spent out front fishing the “old grounds” like I said there is an awful lot of Flounder up in the Bay and on certain days it is possible that we may turn that way. Conditions on any given day and the latest Intel with what’s being caught where will help me decide which way to go. I look to continue fishing for and catching Flounder with my All-Day trips for quite a while and most of our fishing will likely be out front until the fish in the Bay bunch up as they depart later in the summer.

Half-Day trips continue to have some good days with pan sized Croaker. Capt. Mike reports while he is not seeing too many fish over a foot long there is a few nicer fish starting to show up and when they bite the fishing has been pretty good. Capt. Mike also reports a few Flounder on some of his trips along with various assortments of other inshore species including Kingfish, Triggers and Sharks. As a reminder during the month of July kids under the age of twelve go for free on all half-day trips when accompanied by an adult. This is a perfect opportunity to get the young ones into wetting a line. Half-Day trips depart the docks at 8:00 a.m. 1:00 p.m. and then again at 6:00 p.m. for the evening run.

The summer season is certainly upon us now and fishing opportunities are abundant. Water temperatures are still climbing, we are seeing crystal clear warm water just a few miles off of the beach and both inshore and offshore angling is alive. We have even been seeing Mahi swimming around the boat on a few occasions while drifting the old grounds just twelve miles off of the beach. Maybe next week I can report that we actually got a hook in one! There is not a better time to start planning a fishing trip for either inshore fishing for the Flounders or the Croakers, or offshore fishing for the big Tuna and the Mahi so watch the weather and make your plans now. Capt. Bennett has several open dates for Tuna fishing on the freshly painted Lewestown Lady and is taking reservations now.

If you would like any more information about trips sailing out of the Wharf or you would like to book a private Charter or reserve space on an offshore trip please give us a call at (302) 645-TUNA.

Until Next Week Happy Fishing!

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