One man's Trash... VA beach pier fishing

[Johnsfolly]

Local rains blew out the MD and NJ creeks for the weekend. On our last trip to a local saltwater spot, we caught only one fish. I didn't measure the water temp, but it may be cooler due to the lower than normal airtemps. My wife and I decided to get away for the weekend and headed south down into VA. The hope was to get away from the rain and get into some active fish. As with every trip there is always the hope to get into some lifers, aka fish that neither of us have caught before. We decided to fish the VA beach fishing pier. I have seen YouTube videos of fish caught there, but we have not fished it before.

We went down on Sat. I checked out a spot in Cape Charles VA that I had hoped to do some night/sight fishing for some odd ball flounder and bottom species, e.g., blackcheek tonguefish, smallmouth flounder, hog chokers, stargazers, etc... Water was very dingy and choppy due to the winds. No go on the night fishing.

We did have a nice meal at a restaurant right next to our room.

In the mornign we had breakfast at a local diner and drove across the Chesapeake bay Bridge/Tunnel down into Virginia beach/Norfolk area to get to the pier.

As with any pier in a tourist area, you never know who you will encounter and what you may see. We did see a carrier off in the distance (not a surprise since the naval base was not far from us).

Then there is this guy. He is fishing with an ice fishing rod and it's upside down🤔. I see a lot of folks fishing with spinning reels like they do with their Zebco push button reels. This guy had me scratching my head. I could see flying down with a small rod that could fit in my luggage (I have several), but if you brought the rod I would have expected that you knew how to use it.

I met one other guy fishing the same way. I was going to correct him but his buddy was fishing normally and I figured that he could tell his friend😉.

We were fishing our typical dropper loop bait rigs and using bloodworms and pieces of crab. We did not get a bite for well over an hour and only after we moved deeper. There were a bunch of skates and a couple of singrays caught towards the end of the pier. We both have caught the clearnose skates previously, but Sue has not caught any type of stingray before. I put on a small piece of Fishbites and soon caught our first fish, a silver perch.

That guy was unfortunate since he became cutbait😉. I think two things happened when we moved. We got into deeper water and there was a tide change that got the fish active. We really started catching a variety of fish using bloodwomrs, Fishbites, and the cutbait. We both caught a couple of the clearnose skates on the cutbait (always fun to hand line them over the rail, especially with braided line🙄).

Lots of silver perch were caught. Also more standard species on the bloodworms and Fishbites.

Southern kingfish

Spot croakers

Pigfish (one of my favorites😁)

Sue caught a lifer striped anchovy on a tiny piece of bloodworm.

I caught a menhaden (hook had cut its gills. Too bloody for a photo😒) and my own striped anchovy on the Fishbites and bloodworms, respectively.

I caught a couple more anchovies just by keeping the bloodworm baits a few feet off bottom and just bouncing the rig. I should have put on a Sabiki rig (a six hook multirig used for baitfish), but didn't want to deal with the hassle of dealing with the rig after we were done fishing. We didn't catch any prized species, like bluefish, stripers, cobia, etc. But as multispecies anglers one man's trash is another man's treasure and we had fun catching a variety of fish.

[Terrierman]

Ever done anything but release skates and rays?

[Johnsfolly]

1 hour ago, Terrierman said:

Ever done anything but release skates and rays?

We haven't. I would be interested in trying to eat skate wings or the faux scallops from the stingray wings. Usually we catch them without having the gear, e.g., large cooler with ice, etc. to bring them home.

[Terrierman]

The scallop thing is what I was wondering about.  Were it me, I'd try it.  Very few fish don't meet my standards.  And I bet it's good done right.

[Johnsfolly]

Rick I will let you know if we do get a ray that would make "scallops" and how they taste/work.