Dover to Lewes Creeks

[geebee]

are they any good on an outgoing tide ?

or are they full of turbid water and junk on the outgoing ?

i see quite a few creeks in that stretch and typically i've fished such creeks on the first of the incoming or middle of the outgoing depending on water quality.

and whats parking like in May & June - free ? difficult ? etc

as they're only an hour and a bit away i'll fish em after work in May and save my weekends for IBSP etc

Cheers

Mark

 

[marcq]

cant give you any specific info on those creeks but the ones around cape may and the jersey have some strong tide swings. this also depends on moon phases. there are always schoolies around that area so I wouldn't be surprised to see it be a decent area. only one way to see.

 

[sandfly]

fish the mouths, might find some schoolies or blues. maybe an occasional flouder too. should be spot and small croakers around too.

 

[troutbert]

Maybe figure out how to catch blue crabs in those places. They are delicious.

 

[geebee]

Sandfly - only schoolies ? No larger fish ?

Up in the NE you get very large cows in them after big eels - as wonderfully described by Rich Murphy in his book.

I know guys that have pulled 40" plus fish - I've had a 31" myself and a 30" on the low incoming and last of the outgoing, it depends on the turbidity.

I've made a list of a dozen or so likely spots that I want to check out, I'll start south and go north until I stop finding fish - I figure they'll hug the coast before they cross to Cape May and go up ?

 

[marcq]

The delaware bay a strange place. It has great fishing but the surf fishing it lacks the beach is very shallow not much structure. There are a few spots in the bay where it can be good but the majority of it is flat. The big fish stay in the middle cause its warmer there is bait and its the fastest way up the delaware river. Probably schoolies and probably weekies around jetties and inlets. I wouldnt go to target big fish unless you find a river that has a population of herring.

 

[geebee]

Interesting thanks Marc, I guess that's why people fish the henlopen to Assateague stretch then - more structure.

 

[sandfly]

these backwater areas are more of a area for nursery for juvenile fish. you hook a pickerel or LG. mouth bass as well. there are catfish too. they are just not conducive to large fish. you want to be very careful wading as well as you could sink in mud. there are a few deep creeks that might hold a few larger fish, but finding them and getting to them would require a boat. water gets to warm as well. may and june the stripers are headed north to either spawn or cooler summer feeding areas. may/june is a great time to pick up big cows along the jersey beaches.

 

[marcq]

assateague is a weird example to. one of my friends who does some kind of wildlife control down there catchers tons of big fish in the winter and spring. I am talking fish that are usually 35 inches plus. that being said he is catching them on sand flees and bunker chunks. the key is getting it past the second bar.
what rich murphy describes about using eels is usually a better late spring when bunker is gone and late fall tactic. When I look at jersey I split it into two different sections. usually right at IBSP and LBI. this is where the surf fly fishing get different. I will fish south jersey but I focus on jetties inlets and back bays. the soft structure is much better the further it goes up the coast. although now with all the beach replenishment who know what we have in store for spring.
I am itching to get out but I think we might have to wait till April before anything starts to move around down there.

 

[teedee]

The ocean is very cold. Never had much luck until it gets close to 50 degrees.

 

[geebee]

i don't find consistent action until 52/53.

Marc - I don't find AI strange at all. In fact i'd find it strange if they weren't there.

look at the map - fish come out of the chessie after the spawn, turn left and run the beaches past AI, LBI, IBSP, Long Island, and then either run the CT and Southern County RI beaches and go through the Cape Cod Canal, or they cross from Montauk to Block Island and run across to Nantucket and the Vineyard and then follow the warm water to the Lower Cape and then they run the National Seashore out to stellwagen bank.

they hug the coast whenever they can, taking the most direct route.

they'll only go offshore if there is an extraordinary amount of bait - which does happen, even Montauk can have the odd poor spring.

Those 50lb+ cows that they catch on the Vineyard in late June will have run the open beaches down here in late April or Early May.

if you catch it right, you'll see waves and waves of fish running the beach - my buddy Craig caught a 46" fish right in front of me. I hooked a 26" fish seconds later.

of you can fish all day and only see a few and them bam the next day they are there.

Looking at the map and taking Sandflys comments, it seems those fish cross from Henlopen Beach to Cape May.

time, tide and structure make no difference mostly. though if there are two bars or more then you want Low Tide to reach em.

thanks for the advice guys.

 

[sandfly]

Don't forget that the Delaware has its own run after spawning, I have caught big cows at I.B.S.P. into late June almost every year I was there 35+. Then I would find them from the cape up into Maine along the coast as long as the temps stayed below 60 deg. They seem to skip the areas below I.B.S.P. down to cape may going in the spring and again in fall. To me that area never was that good compared to up north. fish the mouth of shark river in spring too.

I would fish the back water of Indian river. There are places there for wading that you can hook some nice tide runners (weakies) along with some blues over 5lbs. Even sharks back there (caught a puppy hammerhead there that bit me in the leg. (he's on my wall now) plus some nice fluke too. an 8 wt. with heads will do good there.

 

[geebee]

Thanks again - maybe too much boat traffic down south ? big bass skip Waquoit Bay on the cape for that reason we think - structure is perfect and its on the migration trail but after 6am its boats galore.

I've never caught a weakfish, hoping to add that to my species list this year, they call them Squeteague on the Cape. They occasionally make it up there - more and more on the south side in recent years...

 

[marcq]

its just a bait game down south. I have caught a good amount of bass on a big bloody bunker head in cape may and the AC area but if i want to fly fish I stay north. most in the 30 to 45 inch range too. it just not a productive place for a fly fisherman to go.

 

[geebee]

interesting.

i'm still going to try anyway though - i'm finding information that the flats at Henlopen do hold some big fish early on and also somewhere else on the ocean side.

i'll try some spring tides in April and report back.

sometimes you just gotta try - i fished a spot up on the cape that i was told that there were no fish, even the bait guys couldn't catch fish there regularly apart from hundreds of doggies as there was no structure.

but i was fishing a very similar spot just two miles along the same beach so i thought i'd give it a shot.

i got there two hours before dawn so no-one would see me (its next to one of the most popular spots on the cape) on a big spring tide.

when i got there - there was about four big long sandbars at 90 degrees to the beach so i walked and waded out as far as i could and started casting.

3 keepers and a bunch of shorts later, as soon as the sun rose and hit the water the fishing switched off - which was not like the other spot at all - but that was the key....big spring tide, false dawn.

i later learnt from the Mike Laptew videos that as soon as the sunlight hits the water at a certain angle it sends refracted beams down through the water and many fish literally spook out of the shallows to deeper water - especially on busy beaches.

i had that spot to myself for three years before i told a single soul about it. even now i doubt if more than 4/5 people know about it whilst just 1/2 a mile away as many as 100 or so anglers line up shoulder to shoulder with plugs and jigs to fish.

and if even if you don't find fish - its still fun trying huh ?

 

[sandfly]

Go to the point at henlopen on the backside is deeper water close. don't wade in cast from the beach, you'll be surprised how close a 40" fish can come in. I sometimes stand back 20-30 feet and cast to the drop along the wash..

 

[BrookieChaser]

I'll second sandfly's recommendation of Indian River. I've got into stripers on the fly in the river. I've also seen a school of sharks back in the Riverdale area while kayaking.

 

[marcq]

its right there so why not.