Kiptopeake ST Park VA - Looking for Ribbonfish

[Johnsfolly]

I have been intrigued with videos from the Carolinas of folks catching the largehead hairtail, aka, ribbonfish, or cutlass fish. I figured that I would try and get down to the Outer Banks this fall and try for them. Looking through YouTube videos I saw one filmed at a spot that I knew fairly well down in Virginia. This spot was only about 3 hours away. So last Saturday I packed the car and loaded up the girls and we headed down to Kiptopeake state park. We usually get down there to fish at least twice a summer over the last two years.

I had seen in INATURALIST a lifer goby species, a Seaboard goby, observed in Cape Charles VA, a town about 20 mins north of Kiptopeake. So we did a little recon to check out how I might be able to target that goby at some point. We found a fishing pier near the observation location. I went out onto the pier and saw a school of larger minnows that I did not think were Atlantic silversides. I also found some blennies on the pilings of the pier. This was enough for me to grab some microgear and come back wtih Livie to try for some lifers.

We used #22 and #26 hooks with a small weights. We both caught pinfish right off the bat. probably could have caught 20 to 30 if we tried.

The large minnows were not that interested in our baits. The school broke up a bunch with every pinfish caught and released. I casted up current of the remaining fish from the larger school and got some interest. A couple of casts later, (when I didn't catch pinfish 🙄) I hooked one of the minnows. Livie grabbed it and got it into our photo bag with water. I asked if it was just a silverside and she said that she has never seen a fish like this one and knew that I had a new lifer. So what she was looking was that giant mouth and the big silver band on my first striped anchovy! ( I can already hear @JestersHK calling this guy bait and he would be right😉. then again so were the pinfish).

As hard as we tried it became difficult with the increasing wind for Livie to get a tiny bait into the school of anchovies. We tried a couple of different schools along the pier and none were willing to take the worm baits. We decided to go try for the blennies. Livie was up and we saw a few on a couple of different pilings. We have never had trouble with blennies shying away from the bait, but that is what these guys did and then dissappeared. What a dissapointment. We left soon after since we needed to eat and get to the state park while it was still light. The last fish that Livie caught from the Cape Charles pier was a black sea bass.

One the way to the state park we stopped at a Dollar General to see if we could get glow sticks. We found some and headed to the Kiptopeake pier. It was still light when we got there and there was a pretty big crowd. What we didn't know is that we were positioned between lights on the pier. As the night fell, we had only two small sea bass and one spot to show. We were fishing high low rig with a glow stick and one without as well as a glow stick in front of some spoons. No fish. There were lots of baitfish around the lights and by about 9 to 9:30 pm folks began to catch ribbonfish. All were caught right around the lights. We threw a lot of bait (pinfish strips, spot strips, jigs, spoons, crank baits) and only had a couple of follows and not a fish landed. Ribbonfish were actually jumping through schools of baitfish, but still wanted nothing from us. The action died down by 10:30 to 10:45 pm

With a three hour trip ahead of us we left at 11:15 just as the moon was rising. 

This may not have been a success in terms of catching the target species, but I have learned what not to do and have plans if the weather holds to go back down this Weds and try again.

 

[JestersHK]

Haha those pin fish make good bait.   Not sure what I caught a while back but some locals said it was a ribbon fish... this was SC I believe,  the pier south of myrtle Beach

[Johnsfolly]

18 minutes ago, JestersHK said:

Haha those pin fish make good bait.   Not sure what I caught a while back but some locals said it was a ribbon fish... this was SC I believe,  the pier south of myrtle Beach

That's what we were trying for in VA. 👍

[JestersHK]

Dang,  wish you could of caught one.  They were pretty cool looking,  one day I'll try to catalog all my catches lol