Water temperature is creeping up

The last ravages of winter are about to pass. The water temperature at the Delaware Lightship Buoy was 42.5 degrees early this week, and that is just 2.5 degrees below the 45-degree mark that will wake up the tog. Now, I don’t expect all the tog in the ocean to spring into life at the stroke of 45-degree water, but at least we should have some activity from them at that point.

Once the water reaches a decent temperature, 50 degrees, the next problem will be the wind. I can’t imagine how many small-craft advisory flags the Coast Guard has gone through over the past 12 months. It seems that almost every day it is either a small-craft advisory or a gale warning. We even had a few storm warnings. The fish could be stacked up like cordwood and hungry as a pack of wolves, but boats can’t leave the dock.

So, you say, I don’t fish from a boat. Yeah, try working the surf in a 15- to 25-knot northeast wind. Or even the same wind from the northwest. At least with the northwest wind you can cast like a pro. Of course, the bait and the fish are even farther out than a pro can cast.

One of my favorite fish, the black sea bass, received a 20% increase in recreational landings for 2026, and I could not be more pleased.  As a member of the Advisory Council on Summer Flounder, Scup and Black Sea Bass, my recommendation was to lower the size limit to 12 inches and up the bag limit to 20 fish. In the end, the powers that be at NOAA decided to lower the size limit to 12.5 inches, retain the 15-fish bag limit, open the season 15 days early May 1, and continue the season uninterrupted until Dec. 31. All we need now is to see the water temperature go up to at least 50 degrees before May 1. I had booked a reservation on the Angler out of Ocean City, Md., for May 15, and was happy to receive an email from Capt. Chris confirming my reservation had been moved to May 1.

Striped bass also require at least 50 degrees of water temperature to become active. Since the nasty weather canceled our chances of having a fall run of stripers, let’s hope we see better conditions as those same fish head north.  

I think more and more stripers head north during the spring run due to global warming. I base this on reports I get from friends who fish the Hudson River area and on personal observation when I went up there.  

I was there in November 2024 when my son Roger had his middle-school fishing club out for stripers on a head boat. There were schools of striped bass breaking all over the ocean in sight of the New York City skyline, and our boat caught quite a few over and under the 28- to 31-inch slot. We also had some keepers. The stripers were on sand eels and most were caught on AVA jigs. 

I spoke with my friend Gary Caputi while I was in New Jersey last week at the Saltwater Fishing Expo. He fishes the Raritan River and Bay area, and has good luck with big striped bass females either trolling or jigging. This is all catch-and-release or he may fish for one of the tagging programs. He has been fishing these waters for a very long time, and having this many spawning-size females is something new. He told me he is hearing about spawning taking place as far north as Canada.

There are stripers that spawn in Delaware Bay and the Delaware River. Even a few that spawn in Indian River Bay, or at least they once did.

Back in the 1970s and ’80s, I would pull a fine-mesh haul seine in front of our camper trailer at Bay Shore in Indian River Bay. In late summer, I would find young-of-the-year striped bass mixed in with my minnows. My good friend who worked for the Division of Fisheries said I was wrong, no stripers spawned in Indian River Bay. A few years later, he admitted I was right.

I am anxious to see if we get any big stripers this spring at the mouth of Delaware Bay, at the Eights, along the ocean beach, Indian River Inlet, Fenwick Shoal or anywhere inside the three-mile limit. Of course, the weather will play a major role in the success or failure of our attempts to catch anything this spring. And there is absolutely nothing we can do about that!