Fishing Memories Page 3
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I was introduced to fishing at a very young age by my father who enjoyed salt water fishing a great deal. As far back as I can remember, wherever fishermen gathered to tell their stories the conversation usually contained a tale about a Tiderunner and the fish usually wound up getting away. This was during the time when the weakfish fishery was very healthy and plentiful. A Tiderunner during that era was usually a hefty 3 pounds, of course there was the occasional 4 pounder but they were rare. As I got older I began taking my father on a party boat for Father's Day. I think it was around the mid to late 70's on one of these trips that I first encountered the BIG weakies. We usually went out on the Miss Lorraine for these trips and generally fished for Flounder.(Fluke). The boat got to the area where we started fishing and it was a really nice sunny morning. We started our first drift and as I remember we were about a mile above and to the right of Brandywine Light. We made a few drifts in the general area and a few flounders were caught on each drift. Then there was some excitement on the back of the boat when some one brought in a nice size weakfish. We drifted a little further and the bite was on with these BIG weakies. These weakies were in the 6 to 8 pound range and that was the average size with an occasional bigger one thrown in for good measure. These were the biggest weakfish I had ever seen and probably the biggest anyone on the boat that day had ever seen. As we continued the drift and the catch, the weakfish began to disappear but in their place we started catching slammer blues. Anyone who has caught slammers knows that they can range from 7 to 10 pounds and that is what we started catching. After the first weakies were caught almost everybody changed over to bucktails and a piece of strip bait and the blues were nailing them. Since the blues showed up unexpectedly there was a great deal of tackle lost that day along with many many fish. A school of slammer blues will provide a great deal of excitement but on a party boat fishing for flounder they generally just cause havoc. When the bite stopped the Captain ran back up for another drift but the weakfish and the blues had disappeared. After searching for awhile with no luck we put our flounder rigs back on and began catching the flat fish again. This was probably one of the best and most exciting days of fishing I've ever had and regretfully it has never been repeated too that extent.
As the years went by that BIG weakfish run usually lasted for only a couple of weeks and the last time I remember ever catching BIG weakies like that, ended a few years later in the 80's. When we go fishing for weakfish now a days those big ones are only a fond memory and if we use last year as an example we will be lucky if we are able to catch any weakies at all.
I'm sure it would only have a positive impact for the local economy and the recreational fishermen if the Fisheries Management Organization started rebuilding the Weakfish stock. Look how successful they have been with the Striped Bass fishery!!
A Fisherman