Indian River Inlet Fishing Report, 07-12 August: Conditions Matter: Chapter 2

 Friday Aug 11

What a difference a day, or two, can make.  As the next weekend approached, I was excited to get back on the water to try some of the drop-offs and holes that may provide excellent habitat for flounder waiting to pounce on bait moving with the incoming or outgoing tide.  I finally got the Mikey D launched again on Friday evening.  With the sun rapidly setting, I headed straight for the south jetty at Indian River Inlet.  There were 30 minutes left in the incoming tide.  I had a mixture of gulp and live minnows to pursue flounder and a handful of eels in case I saw stripers on the either of the jettys leading to the open sea.  

I was just a few feet off of the jetty on a nice drift with a top and bottom rig when a throwback flounder took the minnow before my first cast hit the bottom.  After fumbling with tackle and fish in the dark I hooked into another before the twilight turned to darkness.  

I decided to use the lights along the Coast Guard station to make the fishing a little easier and to see if there was any activity in the area.  As I approached the sea wall, I was not disappointed.  Schoolie stripers were slamming bait on top and slashing at silversides and bay anchovies just below the surface.  I grabbed and eel and threw it directly into the melee.  Seconds later I felt a tug and then the rod bent hard to the water.  The fight was short lived as the striper cut the eel in two.  The same thing happened on subsequent casts, but with darkness closing in and the tidal flow increasing, I decided to head back to the ramp and get ready for a full day on the water.  

Saturday Aug 12

Saturday brought light winds and a cloudless sky.  Long time friend Phil Weglein and son Connor joined me on an excellent day for a charter excursion to find flounder on the ledges around Indian River Bay. We started with a quick lunch at Dockside co-located at the Indian River Marina.  A perfect way to start a day on the water!  Conditions were close to perfect.  An incoming tide set us up on several nice drifts along the south jetty and the sandbars around Burton's Island.  Armed with minnows and gulp on top and bottom rigs, we soon started getting consistent hits.  The flounder seemed to be attracted to a mix of nuclear chicken gulp, white gulp, and live minnows.  Several hours of drifts produced 3 flounder over the rail, an alewife, and lots of short takes.  Connor was quick to bring rod to hand as he dispatched the flounder back in the water after the necessary hero shots.   No surprise that most of the action took place on ledges and drop-offs where the depths varied from 8' to 25'.  

While no keepers ended up in the cooler, the action just made me look forward to chasing the flatties back in the inlet or maybe down south in Cape Charles as Mikey D Fishing shifts HQ to the Southern Outpost.  Stay Tuned!

Tight Lines,

Mikey D Fishing