Happy New Year, everyone. It’s a brisk afternoon with more cold weather coming soon. This weekend there could be a decent snow cover — great weather to sit indoors and work on your gear.

Visit your favorite shops and spend some of that holiday cash. And it is definitely time to get your 2025 fishing licenses and surf tags. Thankfully surf tags are not limited and that has created zero issues for people to purchase them. It’s like if you don’t limit something suddenly no one cares. Even if I never use it I always buy my trout stamp. This is one of the fishing activities that attract a lot of kids, and it is good to help that program out as much as we can. It only costs a few bucks to help out. Also, occasionally it is fun to just sit and fish for trout in a barrel.

Winter fishing is in full effect and the weather is certainly about to show us that. I’ll take some snow — it’s always fun for the fur babies to play in the snow and also a great excuse for us adults to play in the snow. The dog loves to be out in it for hours, and I have to watch him. I might have to start up the snow shoveling classes again this year. There’s nothing like showing people how to safely shovel snow at my house, and clear my driveway at the same time. Bring your own shovel. We have hot cocoa.

Fishing has been typical for this time of year. You’ve got to go fish if you want to catch. I’m going out later with Fishbites Earthworm to see if it works as well in the colder water. Again, another good excuse to get out and spend the day fishing. I have to try out this new DS Custom Tackle candy cane bullet float color on some perch and whatever else is biting. The spot rigs work well, too, they have the smaller number four octopus circle hooks, perfect for the winter species around Delmarva. Mostly we fish for white perch this time of year and then chase yellow perch or Neds. Also known as fish for whatever is biting, just glad to be out here today.

I’ve been hearing a lot of shots out in the fields of Sussex County the past week. I’m glad the hunters are busy. We are losing more and more areas to developments, and I see more and more animals looking for habitat daily. The county is logging a lot of woods across the street, too. That has sent a lot of wildlife seeking quieter spaces. Our woods are right full of wee beasties now. I haven’t seen any really big deer this year. This used to be the land of giants, but the herds have been thinned and the habitat is really broken up now. I’ve seen a lot less foxes this year, too, which is odd. Yotes are taking up space out there, too.

The beach replenishment project at the Indian River Inlet has created a very wide and tall beach. It looks like it was way back in the day. With continuous pumping of sand, that should keep the beach at that current shoreline for a while. That is how it is supposed to work. We shall see how mother nature responds. The inlet wall being fixed and the sand pumping started back up should keep the coastline in somewhat of one place. I can go in my pictures from Irene to today and show the constant movement of that beach in pictures after every storm. Once the inlet wall failed and the sand pumping stopped, the erosion was much more dramatic. The point is, with the wall being fixed and sand being pumped again, everything should be just fine.

It’s time to jump online and get my fishing license. I’ll pick the surf tag up locally. It’s much easier and you are instantly legal. Assateague tags will be the next grab. The nice thing about those are they are from the month issued not by the year. Always a good idea to get the Maryland fishing license about the same time as my Assateague tag to remind me to get both, because you need both.
May you have a baity fishful new year.