After a week spent vacationing along the Delaware coast (Bethany Beach), along with some spotty weather courtesy of Tropical Storm Debby, our family returned home. The weather cleared and cooled. It’s been a fabulous week to spend outdoors. I even spent a day working on the McKee, re-bedding all the hardware topside and replacing the brass drain tube on the stern/transom. By Wednesday, the boat was ready and we decided to take her out for a Severn River sunset cruise. And, a little fishing.
The evening was near flawless. The launch was easy at our neighborhood ramp, despite the very low slack tide during this First Quarter of the moon phase. River traffic was mild and mostly calm. We motored casually down from Valentine Creek to Long Point, enjoying the gentle breeze and air temp of about 80F. The surface water read 84F on the Humminbird.
Side-scan showed some bait moving through the south/west side of the river. Not a mass abundance, which I expect to pick up in the coming days/weeks. Last August, we saw the early signs of autumn at about this exact time of year. Especially, breaking birds over scattered bait. But, there were no such signs on this particular outing (next week, I intend to report on the morning activity).
Two other boats were fishing the general area of Long Point, so there were three of us trying our luck. In June, this area was highly active in the evenings with striped bass up to mid-20s moving through and agressively hitting a mix of lures, including jig/paddletail combos, jerkbaits, and topwater.
As the family enjoyed relaxing on the boat and watching the developing sunset, I pitched a 3/4oz G-Eye jig and 5″ Zman DieZel Minnow (chartruese) around the point and between a few docks that jutted out adjacent to it. No hits. The southwest breeze gave us a perfect drift up and along this stretch of Long Point. At one point, a mostly bare side-scan pinged a small school of fish passing through, probably short schoolies. They wouldn’t hit my offerring. A nice school of white perch showed itself on imaging, and had I agressively targeted them, I may have caught a fair share. But, I wasn’t interested.
To get the best view of the sunset, we motored directly across the river to the north/east side, into the Sullivan Cove vicinity. This gave us a direct view to the sun setting on the horizon. It’s truly what we came out on the boat for; and gave us all the visuals we sought. I also put the boat in position to cast from deep water (17–20 feet) toward a shallow flat with grass in about 3–5 feet of water. A fish broke surface, but I couldn’t muster a strike on topwater. No matter, the evening was gorgeous. The family was happy. The sunset beautiful. The fishing gentle and fun. The boat performed well. Perhaps next sunset we’ll find willing fish. See y’all on the water again, real soon!
