In keeping with tradition we aptly named the trip the "Rum and Redfish Tour".
Erick had some friends from North Carolina coming up for the tournament also and had lined us up to stay with his friend Scott (scooteri) at a beach house he has in Sandbridge, Virginia. Wow! What a nice place to say the least. It was not the fanciest house on the beach but it more than suited a bunch of kayak fisherman's needs. Even had a cool widows walk which provided some great views of the area.
View from the top deck-
The first night was just the three of us and we did some exploring, by car, of the area of different launches to see the lay of the land. We had decided to fish the Broad Bay area the next morning but when we showed up on Thursday early AM we were met by a locked gate and a "not open until 8 AM" sign. Time to move on to Plan B.
Plan B was to fish a very popular area named Lynnhaven Inlet. The launch has several boat ramps and a seperate dirt launching area for kayaks. The parking fee was $5.
View of the launch area, this is called Crab Creek.
It was tough paddling out to fish an area we did little to no research on and none of us really had any idea where to go. As we exited Crab Creek I spoke with an older gentleman wading looking for some trout. So we stayed in his area and hole jumped from a distance waiting for the tide to come in. As we moved to the inlet area I spotted a big foot in the grass and it turned out to be none other than Jeff Suber after a 14 hr. drive.
We sat and talked to Jeff and his friend Kevin for a bit and they pointed us in a few directions we could go, thanks Jeff!
The three of us paddled around for six hours and learned the lay of the land. I was able to find a small double slam of red, trout and flounder.
This was the largest red of the day.
Lynnhaven was a very pretty place with tons of areas to fish.
A few pics of the area-
Erick in search of something, anything
Some incredible houses surrounding the area-
As you can tell it was a beautiful blue sky day at Lynnhaven Inlet, soon that would all change.
Day 2 we slept a little later and woke up to pouring down rain and winds in the 20's. We went to the Broad Bay area. The entrance we used to fish Broad Bay is through First Landing State Park. We were met that day by Ashley and Nathan from N.C. and Chris who is a member of the Wilderness Team from Michigan. Parking and launching within the state park is $8. Very easy launch but the conditions sure proved tough. I did not take any pics on Friday due to the rain. Erick had the hot hand and was able to land several very nice reds that he snapped a quick pic on his cell phone.
Overall our results, several of the other guys caught nice fish, were much better at Broad Bay than Lynnhaven so we made a quick decision to fish the area on tournament day. Erick and I called it quits a bit early due to the fact he had no anchor trolley and without a trolley made it very tough to fish as we were having wind gusts up to 30 mph that day. We went back to the beach house to install a much needed anchor trolley.
The Captains Meeting was Friday night and with 215 anglers in the tournament it looked like there was more plastic than concrete in the parking lot. We received our Captains bags and went home for some much needed rest.
We awoke on Saturday, tournament day, with a little rain but just as much, mabye more, WIND.
Rigged and ready to battle the wind-
We had to take goofy pics of ourselves as part of the rules
We all set off and several of us quickly found some fish. Nathan found a nice red early and moved on from there. I was able to find this fat, but little, red on a dock not far from the launch.
I spent the rest of the day looking for a trout/fluonder to take a picture of. The minimum length for any fish was 12" and I was unable to find anything larger than a 11 3/4" flounder and a 10" trout. The extreme, never relenting wind made fishing very tough conditions.
Nathan was able to complete his small slam and we were off the water around 2:30 to the weigh in. It had been a very long day for sure.
In the end the fishing proved slow for most of the anglers. Nathan Raycroft from North Carloina who stayed with us and fished with us was the only angler (out of 213) to catch a slam and he won a new kayak from Hobie.
All in all it was a great time and a lot of fun fishing/exploring a new area. The tournament had tremendous prizes and benefitted two tremendous organizations.
http://www.projecthealingwaters.org/
and
http://www.kayakanglerssa.org/clubs/Her ... fault.aspx
Both of these organizations use fishing, especially kayak fishing, in the rehabilatation of injured combat veterans. To hear some of the stories from these organizations would put tears in your eyes.
I had a great time to say the least. It was nice fishing again with an old friend and to make many new ones. Thanks again to Scott for a great place to stay and congrats to Nathan on winning first place. I surely hope to go back.
Maybe step away from the rum?