It is Labor Day weekend and I have been looking forward to visiting Virginia Beach to do some fishing. Living in Charlotte, NC I am always excited to get out on the "Big Water". I arrived Friday night and my brother Jerry told me that he had lined up a boat for us but that the weather man was predicting NE winds and heavy seas. The Termite is a 24' Wellcraft center console with twin Johnson V6's and extremely sea worthy so we decide we are at least going to take a look the next morning. We get to the boat around 10:00 and it is raining pretty heavily. Jerry and I looked at each other, then up at the sky, and without saying a word started loading up the boat. We headed for the Lessner Bridge and asked a few boats drifting in the Creek in they were catching anything. Nobody was having any luck but everyone said it was to choppy out in the Bay and they were staying put.


When we reached the Lessner it did look a little choppy but you could see that beyond the entrance markers the water was settled down a little. We settled ourselves, made sure all our gear was secure, and headed out to the Cape Henry wreck. The great thing about having a day that isn't picture perfect is that the boat traffic is at a minimum. When we arrived at Cape Henry there was only one other boat out there. We quickly baited up and dropped our lines. The tide was ripping pretty well so we put on some heavy weight. About five minutes later we pulled up and secured our medium action gear opting for some wire line rigs. I am not used to fishing with such heavy gear but at least we were holding bottom. It wasn't long and I had my first hookup. I thought it was going to be a nice size flounder but it turned out to be about 13" (Pictured right, you can see that even the small ones make me happy!). As I said I wasn't used to compensating for that heavy gear and 20 oz. sinker.


It was only a few minutes later when Jerry had a fish on. He pulled up a nice 18" Flounder and we had our first fish on ice. Now we were starting to get excited. We make about 4 long drifts in the general vicinity of the wreck and caught 9 Flounder, 4 of them ending up in the cooler (3 of the keepers being mine). The water had settled considerably and the boats were starting to congregate around the wreck. We decided to move on the the Baltimore Channel and see what we could do there. We made a few drifts without so much as a nibble. Again on the move, this time to the Fourth Island to see if we could land a couple of Blues. Nothing happening at the fourth. We headed to the First Island, making a few stops between to drift for Flounder. Again nothing.


It was getting late and our fuel supply was dwindling so we decided to do a mega - drift from the First Island. We started getting a bunch of hits but couldn't seem to bring a fish in the boat. After about 15 minutes of this Jerry had finally hooked up. It turned out to be a good size Croaker. Not exactly a Horse Croaker but almost. Within about half an hour Jerry had caught five 11" - 14" Croaker and I had barely gotten a nibble. All in all, we had a great day on the water. We had broken the Cardinal rule and left a spot that was hot in search of another spot that was hot and it bit us on the behind but as always we were just happy to be out there. Tomorrow back to the wreck, weather permitting, and hopefully some more nice Flounder in the cooler.


We would like to give special thanks to Garland Smith for letting us use his boat, the Termite, for this fantastic trip.

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