Delmarva Fishing Report Nostalgia

Matt Shark Fishes Ocracoke

fishtalkmag.com  Delmarva reports. Nostalgic for me, because I've been riding down that peninsula to Virginia Beach and on south to the Outer Banks since I was eight-years-old, at least until 2018. You never know if you're ever going back, when your son has moved to the West Coast. BUT...once I retire, I can just drive down there. lol. 

It is 13 hours to Ocracoke. Including the wait for a ferry, which can be an hour, and the ferry ride is at least 45 minutes. It is a long way down the beach from Kitty Hawk. And at Ocracoke, that's where the buck stops. The Outer Banks are only about halfway done at that point, but no more highway or roadways exist to take you further south, although there are boats to various island sections. 

But about Delmarva, I have fished the Susquehanna Flats, which these reports call "Way North." The other day, I wrote about being a member of Mercer County Bassmasters. I remember that for our Spruce Run tournament, we stayed at the Sunset Motel, but I have no more memory of that. It is interesting, though, that many decades later, I met a man some 10 years younger than me, a popular New Jersey poet, BJ Ward, lauded with many honors, who had worked as a waiter at the Sunset Motel's restaurant. I told him about that, but if he was awed--as I was--it stayed hidden. He autographed a copy of one of his books for me, joking about how, if you change the "a" in waiter, the word is "writer." One of Ward's books, Gravedigger's Birthday, is endorsed by Pulitzer Prize winning poet, Stephen Dunn. Another greatly awarded poet, Stephen Dobyns, also endorsed the book. 

Another decade and some years passed, and BJ and I communicated on Facebook Messenger about pike fishing...at Spruce Run Reservoir. He was going with his son? Or was it a friend?

In any event, it's one of those cosmic connections that keep repeating themselves. Trying to get a message through. We think we think in the head. But something else thinks us. 

But here's what I was getting at. Mercer County Bassmasters not only held a tournament on the Susquehanna Flats; it was the most memorable tournament for me. I might have caught a smallmouth bass. I know one was caught. The water is big. Wide. Bay-like indeed. Biggest bass caught was an even four pounds, but there were some others. We stayed at a motel, and I distinctly remember playing cards. 

Amazes me how long ago that was. Going on 50 years. And to have living memory from events that long ago. I had passed that region while traveling south to Washington DC a number of times. Havre de Grace. 

I kind of like having a Delmarva fishing report I can find online. 

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