Well, spring has sprung.....And the fishing is slowly getting off to a decent start. For the folks brave enough to venture to the ocean structure sites, the Tautog fishing is bringing decent but not stellar catches, that will change as the weather gets nicer. So far the “Katydid”, captained by Brent Weist, has jumped right into wreck fishing and produced nice catches of Tautog.
On April 10th, the Katydid turned up a nice catch of 30 tautog on ocean structure. Then on April 17th, the “ Monday Crew” turned up another 30 fish aboard the Katydid, and 2 citation Tautog recorded that day. Also doing their part, The Thelma Dale, The Grizzly, The Pirate king were also out catching some of the toothy footballs.And so it begins, on April 18th the bluefish started to show up. From Cape Henolpen to Re- hoboth, all the way down to Indian River Inlet. Gage Taylor, of Dover DE weighed in 3 of the “slammers”, at 11.9, 9.9, 9.7 lbs. Then the word got out that they started to feed on the beach. DSF’s own Rich King brought one in to be cleaned at our shop and it weighed in at around 6-7 lbs, caught on a silver 3oz spoon near Rehoboth beach.
From the beach/pier at Henlopen state park, Alex Neiss and Job Robertson, weighed in 2 blues at 15.8, and 12.1 re- spectively. Later this week Alex weighed in a citation 18.5 lb Bluefish. Three of our own local boys also had a great day of catching the blues at the state park beach/ pier as well. Tanner Virden, Jonah Robertson and Jackson Ostroski landed 8 off the beach, all 3 had great catches weighing 11.2 lbs to the biggest, and citation worthy fish coming to the scale at 15.8 lbs, caught by Jackson Ostroski. Altogether, the young men caught 8 big ones in a couple hours of pounding the surf. And last but not least, the short stripers are everywhere.
We are getting reports of catches of shorts into the 70’s in a sitting. From the ditches of the Broadkill River to Lewes/Rehoboth canal and again down to Indian River Inlet. Hopefully, we will be lucky enough to catch some of the big girls that normally make pit stops along our beautiful coast line. Only time will tell...........Tightlines everyone, stay tuned for more reports as the season gets off to what seems to be the start of a good season of fishing.
by Tom Serbin