PA sportsmen can now hunt for turkey in the morning and fish for shad in the afternoon

Right now is a sportsman’s delight in that they can hunt spring gobblers in the morning, then head over to the Delaware River for some shad fishing action. 

Shad anglers are reportedly catching them from Easton on up to New York State. And doing so from boat and shore. 

On a recent Bi-State Shad Fishing Contest the top shad was a 5.06-pound buck. Second place was a 4.925 pounder. And in the kids ages 11 and under group Everette Warman placed second with a 4.770 pounder. In the 12-15 age group, David Schell placed fifth with his 4.135-pound shad.
 
Steve Meserve, the commercial shad fisherman who operates a shad netting operation in the Bucks County stretch of the Delaware River, has been reporting modest catches every time he pulls in his nets. Most recently he reported seven buck and one roe while he returned eight buck shad. This same net also produced one smallmouth bass, 18 catfish, one sucker, three quillback and four gizzard shad. But if we get additional heavy rain storms that will raise the river four feet or more, he could be off the river for a while. 

On Sunday morning, Andrew Hildenbrand posted on the Delaware River Shad Fishing site that he fished the Riegelsville stretch of Delaware and went 27 for 32 plus a bonus walleye. David Perruso also posted that he fished from 7 a.m. 11:30 a.m. and landed 22 shad and probably lost a dozen more. By using downriggers on his boat plus plugs and TripZ’s both were getting hits. Hot color this day was gold tri-color spoons. 

Further down the Delaware closer to Philadelphia and even in the Bucks County area, stripers are hitting bloodworms and the linesiders are sizable. They customarily follow the shad run.

Since the weather has warmed you may want to hit the Jersey shore where the striper bite has been reported as good and getting better. 

According to our reporters from On the Water Magazine, sizable stripers are being caught in Raritan Bay and in local rivers and along the beaches. The surf action too picked up with anglers picking up stripers on clams. Rick Hebert at Tackle World in Rochelle Park reported that there’s a solid striper bite in Raritan Bay with fish hitting shads, metal-lip swimmers and live bunker. 

Also showing up are bluefish in the Shrewsbury and Navesink rivers and in the Manasquan River and Barnegat Bay. And fluke season kicked on Sunday, but prior to this, they were already hitting baits intended for other species. 

Salt water angling will only get better as the weather warms and continues on climbing into summer temps. 

Anglers should not forget local streams for trout action. With recent stockings, I made drive-by passes Saturday along the Jordan, Coplay and a part of the Little Lehigh crews and fishing pressure was virtually nil.