Last April 29th I hooked and lost my biggest Delaware bass yet. That's the fish above, you can read that post HERE. Well a year to the day, I finally got one of those pre-spawn bass. These bass haven't spawned yet, as the target temperature, I'm told is 65 degrees. All the big fish I have seen are egg laden, and way wider in girth then they are long.
With work being Telehealth and a break in the action for the day I was able to run down on the dead low tide. Dead low lasts about 20 minutes before the tide brings the water, quickly. With the water down, and visibility good I waded out as far as I could to fish the channel. 60-70 foot casts with a 450 gr line very quickly blow out the shoulder and elbow. After a bunch of casts she took the SF Blend herring fly and dropped down to the bottom, I was surely looking at a 30 pound fish I thought.
With my perch pretty secure I turned her and she dropped back and came in pretty quickly. Her weight was far more then normal for her length. I went back at the same spot and inched my way
back with each 15 minutes as the tide flooded, and it does flood. Fishing this river definitely calls for looking at the tide chart and planning accordingly. With the upper end if the tide line lower I jumper upstream and had a nice time just casting and retrieving, not a tap, but again, for some reason felt confident.
This river will tame and haunt you. The striped bass have been here for about a month, my first coming March 26th. So now we wait and see, will the girls spawn and quickly head out back to sea? Will there be enough bait to hold them? When will the influx of smaller bass, mostly males, and how long will the water temps stay in tolerable range? There's still plenty of fishing here left to be had, before I begin the drive of shame routines down at the beach.
