#2: The Police Wake us Up in Delaware

Delaware proved to be much more difficult than we were expecting. As we started doing research and asking around at bait and tackle shops, we discovered that the Delaware state fish, the weakfish (aka gray trout), has suffered from excessive commercial fishing and their population in the Delaware bay is not what it once was.

We started at Bowers beach, using cut bait, shrimp, and crabs as bait. We caught a turtle, some croakers, and some minuscule oyster toadfish.

We then decided that night to go try at Slaughter beach, which was about an hour north of Bowers. Daniel caught a nice sized dogfish shark, but still no luck on the weakfish, and the theme continued into the next day.

At that point we figured out that we would need to get extremely lucky to catch a weakfish from shore, so we bit the bullet and bought tickets for a boat, the Captain's Lady. This was a fishing boat that took between between 15 and 20 other people on board in the Delaware bay. We had an early start, so settled down in the van in a parking lot to sleep for the night at a 24 hour Wawa. Since the lights were bright, we moved the van away into a dark spot and had our own special wake up call from Delaware's Finest at 3AM. They were worried about us, and wanted to make sure we were okay. Check and check. Off to the docks to catch the Captain's Lady.

We caught tons of little croakers and some decent sized oyster toadfish, along with a Black Sea bass and finally we got our weakfish!

Delaware was also our first encounter with a fully stoned human being looking for a ride from us. Escaped and headed to Jersey!