If your one who's dialed in then no doubt one of the things you look at is water temperature. Leading up to the March 1st opener, and before winter showed up, I thought for sure we'd be looking at water temps in the high 40's if not 50 by March 10th. For me, higher water temps mean two things, the fish that are there wake up, and the ones that are coming start moving. Right now we're probably in the "waking up" phase of early spring striped bass. Those are the ones that are lethargic but will pick up some tasty bloodworm or chunk morsels or an a good day will hit a plug, rubber, or fly. Today I gave it a go at the high tide with water temps hitting just under 42 degrees. No signs of cormorants just yet which is usually a good indication that the shad and river herring have started to arrive.
The back of Raritan Bay is the warmest water I've seen it this early at 44 degrees, that's pretty good considering all the runoff that affects water temps back there. Below, the Shrewsbury River is coming along nicely at 45 degrees, and waters in and around there should be heating up soon. I haven't heard any reports of bunker sightings but that's what got us going good last spring.
To the north Newark Bay is hitting 44 also, but all of these waters drop when whatever sun we have goes down along with cooler air temps. A N-NE wind blowing cool air down can pull any heat off the water cooling it. And the big river, the Hudson, the second leading manufacturer of striped bass along
the East Coast is still cool, 40 degrees in Manhattan. No doubt there's a lot of fish in the deeper channels in and around the New York Bay staging for their annual spawning migration northbound. The Hudson River-mileage wise is like the Delaware, about 110-130 miles upriver to get their freak on.
Down inthe Chesapeake, in Lewisetta, Va, at the mouth of the Potomac the water there is 48.9 degrees. There are fluctuations in water temps all around the United States largest estuary. With Kiptopeke Va, near Cape Charles, coming in 54.1, and the top of the bay near Chesapeake City, Maryland, where the Chesepeake and Delaware Canal is, is at 45.1.
The C&D Canal is 14 miles long starting at the Elk River, which is a tributary of the Chesepeake Bay, and ends up in the Delaware Bay opposite Salem NJ. Salem is mile marker 60 on the Delaware River mile marker chart. Ships can go from the canal, into the Delaware, and then up to ports in Philadelphia or Camden, which is mile marker 95. The canal is 450 wide and 35 feet deep.
So Chesepeake fish can, and they say they do, go from the Bay, through the Elk, through the Back Creek, into the C&D Canal, and into the bay. From there they can go right down to the Delaware Bay and out into the ocean, or go left and follow the bait up the Delaware River above Philadelphia. During the dead-days of the Delaware River they used to think the Delaware strain of striped bass was decimated, and extinct, and the Chesepeake fish "took over", but scientific genetic theories debunked that hypothesis.
Full disclosure, I've never been to the C&D Canal, and have never fished the Chesepeake Bay. So anything I write about it is from information I get from books or online. One day, maybe this year, I'd
love to see the bay, and more so the famed Susquehanna Flats. The Susquehanna is the Chesepeake's largest tributary and is located in Maryland. The headwaters of the "Susky" are from two branches, the North Branch near Cooperstown, NY and the West Branch which starts near Elmora, Pennsylvania. At it's longest its 444 mile long and empties into the Chesepeake at Harve de Grace, Maryland.
The Susky is known for it's tremendous smallmouth bass fishery. It's where fly guy legend Bob Clouser fished and invented the Clouser Minnow, one of the most productive flies of all time. I'm not a smallmouth guy, but maybe I should think about it since we have a good number of them in the Delaware River. But I hope to do the Susky Flats and maybe even the Chesapeake this year.
Keep watching those water temps, get your flies ready, and go make reports and don't wait for them.