September is here, my favorite month of the year.
Jim Bolton September is here, my favorite month of the year. The weather starts to cool down. The nights are cooler - no more air conditioner. The fish get hungrier.
Hunting season opens with bow and arrow season coming in. The bugs and insects start to disappear.
And of course it's a very beautiful time with all of the trees changing into their fall colors.
I remember catching my two biggest weakfish in September - a 15 and 13 pounder when the big weakfish were running.
I also caught two of my biggest large mouth bass in September - a 5 pound 2 ounce and a 4 pound 8 ounce in Union Lake.
I also shot my first deer in September with my bow and arrow - a spike buck.
The Delaware Bay area has been pretty active. Ken at Husted's Landing said quite a few croakers are being caught.
His son Joe and buddy Ron had a nice catch of weakfish. Too bad you can only keep one per man. They also had some croaker and a couple of blues.
Dale and Don had a cooler of perch and so did the "perch king" Don McCarthy.
Plenty of perch but Ken said the crabbing has never been better. Everyone is getting at least a bushel.
Over at the "Anchor Marina" in Matt's Landing Bob said quite a few 20 to 22 inch weakfish are coming in.
And lots of kingfish and croakers and only a couple of miles off shore.
Shedder crab is the hot bait. He also had a lady named Bella Ness come in with a 24 inch cobia.
Late news from "Husted's Landing". Ken said croakers are good in the mouth of the creek. Bruce H. and son Jack of Millville came in with a cooler full of croakers.
He also had Keith Kauffman and wife Marlee come in Sunday with 3 keeper flounders.
Jim's Bait and Tackle in Cape May reported some good catches of flounder coming in and some nice size ones up to 9 pounds.
Along the coast they are catching a variety of flounder, croakers, weakfish, kingfish and bluefish.
How can you beat that for some interesting fishing?
Jim Bolton is the outdoors columnist for the South Jersey Times. He can be reached at 856-313-9347 or 22 Arbutus Ave., Millville, NJ 08332.