By Eric Burnley
Delaware’s Indian River Inlet lies in the southeast corner of Sussex County, the area native Delawareans call lower, slower Sussex County. While that remains true for most of the county west of the coast, the area around Rehoboth, Dewey Beach and Bethany Beach comes alive in the summer.
For fishermen, the two marinas on either side of Indian River Inlet hold their boats at the ready for adventures that vary from flounder action right off the coast to billfish in the canyons. Both offer short runs to the ocean without any obstructions like bridges or sandbars to implead their progress.
There have been a series of bridges over the inlet that suffered from the tidal currents, storms and bad planning. The current bridge is a marvel of engineering that has no supports in the water and is high enough to clear any sportfishing boat.
The Cape Gazette of Lewes, Delaware, recently published a look at the history of the inlet and the yacht basin:
“Beginning in the 1940s, the northside was the place for people to gather and catch a boat to go fishing. There were both charter and head boats running from the marina,” the Cape Gazette report said.
“According to a 1939 edition of the Wilmington News Journal, the Indian River Yacht Basin was part of the plans by the Delaware State Parks Commission to turn Delaware’s coastal lands into a large
