Delaware Bay flounder run heats up as weakfish finally return

What's biting

What's next

With flounder already producing keeper limits at the EP Tower and September historically the best stretch for Old Grounds sea bass, croaker, and flounder together (per Hook 'em and Cook'em), the next two to three days should keep building on the same pattern rather than shifting it. Expect the Bay's flatfish bite to hold or improve through the weekend as water continues its seasonal cooling trend, pushing fish onto the same reef and structure areas already producing — the EP Tower, Port Mahon reef sites, and the Old Grounds all look like the places to be.

The weakfish that just showed up along the Bay coastline (Hands Too Bait and Tackle) are worth watching closely. A fish that's been absent all spring and summer arriving now, in September, often signals a short but concentrated window rather than a slow build — anglers who get on bloodworms and jigs in the evening over the next week or two have the best shot before that push moves through or scatters.

Croaker and spot should stay a dependable bottom-bait option on bloodworms, sand fleas, and Fishbites at Port Mahon and around Woodland Beach pier (Smith's Bait Shop, Eric Burnley), with the 9-inch minimum size worth keeping in mind if regulations apply where you're fishing — check current DE state regs before harvesting. Small striped bass are mixing in at Woodland Beach pier on bloodworms, but that bite reads more incidental than a real push yet; watch for it to firm up as water temperatures drop further into fall, which is typically when striper numbers build through the Bay.

Offshore, the canyon bite (tilefish, tuna) reported in the NJ/DE offshore reports is a longer run from the Bay itself but signals the broader regional pattern still has warm-water species (mahi, white marlin, cobia) mixed in with the tuna transition from trolling to chunking — worth factoring into planning if running Bay-adjacent inlets toward the canyons.

No live buoy or gauge readings are available for this cycle, so plan around the tide rather than a specific temperature or flow number: fish moving water over the reef sites and inlet structure, and treat any weekend trip as weather-dependent until you've checked a current local forecast. If the flounder and croaker bite holds as these reports suggest, this week and next should be one of the stronger flatfish stretches Delaware Bay sees all year.

Context

A four-foot barracuda taken along the buoy line from B to the Lightship — described by Hook 'em and Cook'em as the first barracuda they've heard of out of Delaware waters — is the kind of anomaly that shows up more often now as warm-water species push north later in the season, but it's still a genuine rarity for this fishery rather than a pattern.

More telling for a typical September read is the weakfish story: Hands Too Bait and Tackle notes these fish were 'suspiciously missing all spring and summer' before finally arriving along the Bay coastline this week. That's a late, compressed appearance compared to a normal season where weakfish would typically show earlier in the summer, and it lines up with flounder action that multiple Bay-area shops describe as accelerating hard right at the transition into fall — Higbee's Bait and Tackle calls this week's EP Tower action 'exceptional,' with keeper flounder to 22 inches and party-boat pool fish to 25.

Hook 'em and Cook'em frames September itself as typically one of the better months for Old Grounds sea bass, croaker, and flounder together, as all three species tend to improve in size and quantity heading into fall — so the current stretch reads as on-schedule to slightly ahead of a typical seasonal build, rather than early or late. Croaker and spot action at Port Mahon and Woodland Beach pier (Smith's Bait Shop, Eric Burnley) looks consistent with a normal late-summer-into-fall Bay pattern. No comparative year-over-year data is available in these reports, so treat 'improving' as relative to earlier this season rather than a multi-year trend.