Please Choose a Park:
Naturalist's Notes
Delaware Seashore State Park
by Jim Hall, Delaware Seashore State Park Naturalist
Read Jim's bio.
As a fisherman, I spend a lot of time on the beaches at Delaware Seashore and Fenwick Island State Parks. While fishing has not been the greatest in the past few years, you can always count on a relaxing few hours watching the change of the tide and the birds flying by. With a little luck and the right bait though, you can be rewarded with bites from bluefish, kingfish, striped bass, ling cod, sharks, flounder, or skates. The bait varies by the season and what you’re trying to catch but popular ones include cut squid, cut or whole mullet, bunker (menhaden), clams, bloodworms, crabs, or any one of the popular "fake" baits like Gulp or Fishbites.
Seems as though the best times to fish are on incoming tides and I avoid surf fishing on our beaches when there is a west wind a-blowin’ as it’ll blow every mosquito, greenhead, and black fly out of our bay-side salt marshes right out onto the beach and make for a miserable day (or night)! Some say, "when the wind’s from the west, the fish bite best" but I’ve not been able to stick around on a beach with a west wind blowing long enough to find out how true that saying is!
I am lucky enough to live and work so close to the beach that I can pick and choose when I want to go surf fishing – but in truth, any time you can make it out to wet a line is a great time to come to Delaware Seashore or Fenwick Island and give it a shot. One of the things I tell participants in our ever-popular Introduction to Surf Fishing classes is that there is ONLY ONE hard and fast rule about fishing and that is … if you don’t have a line in the water, you’re not going to catch a fish!