Delaware Bay flounder bite holds strong as fluke season nears close

What's biting

What's next

With no live buoy or gauge readings feeding into this report, base the next few days on what the bay's tackle shops are already seeing plus the calendar. The new moon on 9/10 typically pushes stronger tidal exchange through the bay's inlets and channels, which should keep bait moving and help the drift bite Higbee's Bait and Tackle and Big Dave's Tackle are already describing — expect flounder action to stay solid to strong through the coming week as long as minnows, spearing, and squid strips keep producing on the drift.

Hands Too Bait and Tackle's report of "tons and tons" of bait pushing into the bay is the signal worth watching. That much forage usually drags bluefish and weakfish in behind it and can pull striped bass out of the back-bay sod banks toward more accessible structure as water temperatures ease into fall. If that bait holds through the week, look for weakfish and bluefish action to build rather than fade, especially around dawn and dusk tide changes.

Regulation timing matters for planning trips: per The Fisherman (Northeast)'s NJ/DE Bay Region forecast, fluke season in New Jersey closes 9/25, so the next two weekends are effectively the last full windows to target keeper flounder before that fishery shuts down for the year. Black sea bass anglers get a bump to a 10-fish bag limit on 9/23, which should draw more effort to the reef sites and lighthouses where tautog and sheepshead are already being picked off sand fleas and green crabs, per Big Dave's Tackle and Boulevard Bait & Tackle.

Weekend anglers should plan around moving water rather than a specific clock time, since no tide table accompanies this report — the shops consistently describe drifted baits producing over the incoming and outgoing stages, not standing water. Crabbing remains a solid bay-side option too, with Higbee's Bait and Tackle noting good action in the local creeks. Expect the overall pattern — strong flounder, opportunistic weakfish and bluefish, and building black drum reports on clam baits — to persist through the weekend, with the fluke closure the one hard deadline on the horizon.

Context

Delaware Bay's NJ side runs a fairly predictable early-September script: fluke fishing tapering toward its late-month closure while weakfish, blues, and black drum fill in behind it, and this year's reports track that pattern closely. Higbee's Bait and Tackle and Big Dave's Tackle both describe keeper flounder to the low-20-inch range on the same minnow/spearing/squid-strip presentation anglers have used in the bay for decades — nothing unusual there for the calendar date.

What stands out is the bait volume. Hands Too Bait and Tackle's description of bait "everywhere" from the bay down through Cape May and the Wildwoods is a stronger signal than a typical mid-September report, and it lines up with the bluefish, weakfish, and back-bay striper activity multiple Southern NJ shops are logging at the same time — often that volume of forage means a more active fall run is setting up.

On the regulatory side, per NJ Fish & Wildlife News, the state's Marine Fisheries Council met on 9/10 to discuss summer flounder and black sea bass measures, and the ongoing menhaden Bay Cap hearings could eventually affect the same baitfish stocks anglers are currently benefiting from in the bay — a slower-moving story worth tracking but not one that changes anything for anglers on the water this week.

No buoy or gauge telemetry was available for this report, so there's no direct water-temperature or flow comparison against past years to offer here — that's a genuine gap rather than an assumption, and readers should check a local forecast or the shops' most current reports before planning a trip around specific conditions.