Croaker and other fish to look for in 2025

When I gave my report on the state of fishing for 2025, I was so excited about the fact that striped bass and black sea bass had dodged what would have been serious regulations that I completely forgot about some of the very popular fish that keep anglers happy and well-fed year after year.

I would think first on that list would be croaker. All summer long, the head boats out of Lewes bring in good numbers of these fish to the cleaning table at Lewes Harbour Marina and Fisherman’s Wharf. I think we will not only see more croaker in 2025, but also larger ones. Toward the end of 2024, there were some nice croaker caught, and if we are lucky, those fish could be the harbinger of what is to come for 2025.

Croaker are not only caught in Delaware Bay, but they also show up in the ocean. Back when we had our camper at Bay Shore and I had my 14-foot tin boat, I could run out to what we called the Croaker Canyon that was about a mile directly off the old Coast Guard station. Nothing fancy, just drop down a top-bottom rig baited with squid, and if there are croaker anywhere around, they will come running.

Reef Site 10 is another good croaker hot spot. I recall fishing there with a couple of friends who were after flounder. At that time, we were in my 20-foot Bertram, and my sonar was lit up with schools of croaker. While they fished for flounder with poor results, I fished for croaker with doubleheaders on every drop.

On a charter trip to B Buoy, we were not having much luck with flounder, but I was catching big croaker on my flounder rig. The party was full of non-fishermen who were happy just to catch fish, so the captain wisely decided to switch out the flounder rigs to top-bottom rigs, and we went in with a box full of fish.

One fish that doesn’t get much press is the northern kingfish. You will find them from the beach to the reef sites in Delaware Bay and the fishing pier at Cape Henlopen. By the way, if you travel down south, don’t call them kings or kingfish. My wife and I were fishing on a pier in North Carolina when she caught a northern kingfish. She asked me what she had and I replied, “That’s a nice king.”

A rather gruff gentleman fishing close by said, “That ain’t no king. That there’s a sea mullet.”

When you talk about a king below the Mason-Dixon Line, you will be talking about a king mackerel. Lesson learned.

Getting back to Delaware, we had a good showing of our northern kingfish last summer, and I believe we will see them again in 2025. They are one of the staples for surf-fishermen and will jump all over a nice juicy bloodworm or Fishbites imitation. When fishing from a boat, I have had good luck finding them around the Outer Wall toward the end where it comes close to the Ice Breakers. They also hang around the lower bay reef sites and the fishing pier at Cape Henlopen.

Then there are weakfish or sea trout or just plain trout. Every year I see more and larger trout in my reports. Last year, I had them to 6 and 7 pounds as well as folks who reported getting into larger schools of smaller fish. This is how the great runs of the 1970s and ’80s began.

When I returned from the Navy in 1965, trout fishing was just beginning. We caught them regularly out of Indian River Inlet at night while fishing for stripers with bucktails.

Then my brother-in-law Bobby Woods acquired a wood, lapstrake Grady-White and we began to fish for trout out in the ocean. There were plenty to catch off the condos at Bethany Beach and up in Delaware Bay at Brown Shoal. I finally got a real boat, a 20-foot Bertram, and began to fish all those locations and many more.

The Milford Chamber of Commerce, under the direction of Jack Nyland, began the World Weakfish Championship Tournament, and I covered it until 1989 when I moved to Virginia Beach. It was a roaring success until the weakfish began to disappear. You will hear many reasons why they disappeared. Most of them are not true. No, the Russians did not scoop them up. No, they didn’t get some fish virus. The just went into a down cycle. At first, I didn’t believe in cycles, but over the past 80 years or so, I have seen too many fish go through cycles not to believe in them anymore. Right now, I believe the trout are going through an up cycle. Lucky us!