Fishing forecast for Philadelphia, PA

Philadelphia sits on the tidal Delaware, which the Delaware River Basin Commission counts as tidal for about 133 miles, from the mouth of Delaware Bay up to Trenton, N.J. The commission describes the river at Philadelphia as mostly freshwater. It holds a spring spawning run of striped bass and invasive flathead catfish, first detected in the Schuylkill at Fairmount Dam in 1999.

Best fishing times in Philadelphia this week

Majors run an hour either side of the moon crossing the meridian over Philadelphia, PA; minors, half an hour either side of moonrise and moonset. Where those widths come from: best fishing times and how we compute these times.

When these windows are not the right tool

Solunar theory is John Alden Knight's 1926 prediction; the ±60 and ±30 minute widths are convention, not calculation. The times are computed astronomy, the claim that fish feed inside them is not. The day rating follows moon phase — identical nationwide, so every city shows it the same. A moving front beats the moon: apps that read pressure.

Where to fish in Philadelphia

This page is built around Delaware River (tidal), with Schuylkill in reach — both salt and fresh water, about 10 minutes from the middle of Philadelphia.

The Delaware is tidal up to Trenton, N.J., which the Delaware River Basin Commission calls the head of tide, but the salt front stays downstream of Philadelphia's drinking water intakes: its highest recorded location, river mile 102 during the 1964–65 drought, was still 8 miles below them.

When the Delaware River Basin Commission was created in 1961, the estuary from Wilmington to Philadelphia could go up to six months a year with little or no dissolved oxygen. The Fish and Boat Commission attributes substantial increases in Delaware River striped bass since the mid-1980s to improved water quality and harvest restrictions.

The Delaware River Basin Commission calls the Delaware River Port Complex, with docking facilities in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware, the largest freshwater port in the world. Philadelphia Parks & Recreation lists Pier 68, Penn Treaty Park, Lardner's Point Park and Pennypack on the Delaware among the city's fishing spots.

The nearest grids we publish are New York, NY (130 km, NY Harbor) and Baltimore, MD (144 km, Chesapeake Bay). Different water, and different minutes.

What you can catch in Philadelphia

State listings put these 5 fish in the water around Philadelphia. Plan around the peak, not the open season.

Flathead catfish are not native to the Delaware: Pennsylvania Sea Grant gives their native range as the Mississippi basin and Gulf Slope drainages and dates the first Delaware basin report to Blue Marsh Reservoir on the Schuylkill in 1997. As they grow they switch to crayfish and fish, and they forage at night.

The tidal Schuylkill joins the Delaware a few miles below river mile 95, and fishway and electrofishing surveys on the tidal Schuylkill have documented rising flathead catfish numbers since 2004, when those surveys began.

A Delaware River Basin Commission review calls white perch one of the most abundant fish species in the Delaware Estuary, and the Fish and Boat Commission says they spawn from May through June, with spawning throughout the tidal river.

Tackle sits outside a forecast page: start with how to catch catfish.

Water temperature and season in Philadelphia

Air here swings 45.0 °F across the year, from 33.7 °F in January to 78.7 °F in July. Water is measured separately, and it is not the same number: against these air normals the gauge reads 6.3 °F warmer in October and 2.3 °F colder in April.

Monthly climate for Philadelphia, PA. The air line is the NOAA NCEI climate normal for 1991–2020 — the thirty-year average of a calendar month, not the weather of any one year — measured at PHILADELPHIA INTL AP, PA US (USW00013739), 10.5 km from the middle of town, with 29–30 of the thirty years behind each month. The water line is neither a normal nor the air: hourly readings at NOAA gauge Philadelphia (8545240), 3 km out, averaged by calendar month over 2015–2025 — 10–11 complete years per month. It is the surface at the gauge, not the water on any particular spot, and it lags the air by weeks, so the two lines are not interchangeable. Read into this site on 2026-09-14.

Month by month, the tidal Delaware barely trails the air: in ten complete years at the gauge its coldest month was January six times and February four, and its warmest was July seven times. The lag is a margin, not a calendar shift. April water came in below the air normal in ten of eleven years, and from July through February the average runs above it. April alone has ranged from 47.6 to 57.1 degrees.

Sunrise, sunset and daylight in Philadelphia

The moon window moves daily; the sun does not. Plan a season against this block.

The longest day of 2026 is June 21, 15h 01m; the shortest, December 21, 9h 20m. The meridian passing drifts about 50 minutes later daily: a dawn window this week is an afternoon window in a fortnight.

Delaware's DNREC places the river's main striped bass spawning grounds between Wilmington, Delaware, and Marcus Hook, Pennsylvania, with some spawning above Marcus Hook. A Delaware River Basin Commission review puts the start of spawning in early April and peak activity in late April or early May.

The Delaware River Basin Commission reports that dissolved oxygen criteria are almost always met, but that mid-summer oxygen sags occur at times near Philadelphia's Ben Franklin Bridge and Chester, Pa., a concern for aquatic life, including juvenile fish native to the estuary.

The Fish and Boat Commission says water temperature signals striped bass spawning, with some spawning at 55 degrees but most at 60 to 67 degrees. NOAA's Philadelphia tide station, 8545240, measures the tidal Delaware's water temperature at the city.

License and seasons in Pennsylvania

Rules for Pennsylvania come from Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission, and the calculation behind the table is set out in how we compute these times.

Boat ramps and fishing access in Philadelphia

Public registries put 7 access points within reach of Philadelphia, 5 of them trailer ramps. The nearest is Pier 68, about 2.4 mi out in a straight line.

7 access points within 25 km of Philadelphia, PA, from 0 agency registries and OpenStreetMap — the same records the table below lists. Each dot is a record its source publishes, not a place we have visited; click one for what that source says. The dashed ring is that 25 km circle, centred on the point every distance is measured from — click that centre for its coordinates, even when a cluster sits on it. Zoom in to split a cluster.