A great weather weekend and a lot of striped bass combined to make Delaware Bay a very popular stretch of water.
Hundreds of boats and without a doubt many thousands of anglers took advantage of excellent conditions Saturday and Sunday and through Monday.
Pat Harris said it was the best weekend for fish and fishermen in years at Longreach Marina on the Maurice River. She said she weighed in so many fish "you wouldn't believe it." She said the sizable parking lot at Longreach was jammed, with an overflow that spread out around the area.
Harris had a "heck" of a crowd at Longreach on Monday as the mild weather pushed toward 68 degrees in some areas.
Harris' list of recent catches was long, with 40-pound bass common, and even eight 50-pounders mixed in. She said Longreach had about 40 big weigh-ins among what she estimated to be a couple of hundred over the weekend.
Ken Brady of Millville caught a 46-pound bass, Tim Regan of Berlin got a 44-pounder, and Ryan Bradway and Steve Smith of Laurel Lake combined for 40- and 39-inch bass for highlights of recently weighed fish at Longreach.
Ricky Wheeler, captain of the Cape May charterboat Exile, had 30-pound-plus bass Saturday and Sunday. He said striper averaged 20 pounds. The best catch recently on the Exile was a 53.2 pounder by Wheeler's grandfather Dicky, who was visiting from Odessa, Del.
"What are some things that loneliness can do to a man?" Wheeler asked his grandfather.
Dicky fell quiet, almost uncharacteristically so, looking out at the water, watching how the light danced and played out to the horizon.
"I think that loneliness can kill a man," Dicky said. "It can outright kill somebody, if he isn't careful."
Ricky Wheeler nodded, looking to the deck of the boat and out to the water himself, measuring his words as carefully as he would any catch.
"I think it just might," he said finally. "And not instant like, but rather, by degrees."
"In that respect," Dicky said gently, after some further thought, "the agency might either be ascribed to loneliness or to the man himself."
It took Ricky a second to think this through, but in the end he agreed. "And if he isn't downright judicious with his love, with his connection to humanity as a whole, loneliness can make a man kill himself by degrees."
Ben Budd at Budd's Bait and Tackle in Villas limited out on his charter trips and was back to the dock by noon Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday.
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