Winter in Virginia Beach
The ocean breathes away its warmth; ocean mists and breezes are visible signs of the fleeting heat being replaced by a chill.
As the cold settles in, a stampede begins. It's not something you actually see. There's no tell–tale dust cloud. Knowing that the exodus is happening is more akin to instinct, like something in your gut telling you that hibernation, shelving your fishing dreams until next spring, and putting the fishing rods away is all wrong. That the weekend really doesn't belong to watching football and basketball, or the cozy embrace of a warm couch or arm chair.
Many of Virginia Beach's populace embrace the falling temperatures and the ocean's chill because, well, because it's Striper season and the stampede is on.
The cowboys that navigate this piscine crush of fin and scale are the boat captains that make up Virginia Beach's sport fishing fleet. Their "horses" are a variety of fishing boats ranging from 22' open console crafts to the highly technical 55' cabin cruisers and even larger "head" boats. Lassos and spurs are replaced with sonar–based fish finders and varying sizes of rods and reels. And these cowboys don't ride the edge of the stampede; they're more comfortable sitting right in the middle of it.
Striper season in Virginia Beach typically opens in October and closes in April. It's a time when tens of thousands of fish move through the waters that surround Virginia Beach. So many in fact that Virginia Beach rightly lays claim to being called the Striper Capital of the World, drawing not only local fishermen to its fertile waters, but anglers from all over the U.S. They come for the quantities of fish that can be caught and the size of the fish that can be brought to the boat. They also come for the spectacle that is Striper fishing.
Virginia Beach is located beside the collision of two major ocean currents, the Florida Current coming up from the south and the Mid–Atlantic Coastal Current coming down from the north, and two great bodies of water, the Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean. The currents are a push and a pull for Stripers, at once helping to move them out of their northing feeding grounds and offering warmer water temperatures that make it comfortable to linger in our waters. The Chesapeake Bay is a rich food source that is affected by the tug of the Atlantic Ocean's tides. These tides, happening twice a day, push water into and out of the Bay, and along with the movement of the water come schools of small bait fish, the Striper's primary food source.
The Chesapeake Bay is also the birthplace for 80 percent of the East Coast's Striper population. Once the fish reach approximately 18 inches, the siren call of the open ocean beckons them out of the Bay.
As the massive clouds of these young fish make their way to ocean, they stop at one of the engineering marvels of the world, the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel (CBBT). At 17 miles long, the CBBT is a magnet for Stripers and anglers alike. The bridge/tunnel gives the fish shelter and allows them to take a rest from the pumping tidal flows pushing water and bait fish into and out of the Bay. It also plays to the fishes' nature as an ambush predator. Stripers often use the islands and pilings that make up the foundation of the bridge/tunnel as a hiding place from which to attack moving baitfish.
One local captain characterizes Stripers this way: "You ever really watched a teenager? They're the laziest things ever put on this earth. Stripers are the same way. They don't want to work too hard to eat, so they let the tide do the work for them."
Because of the nature of the fish, the captain goes on to say, "The time we leave the dock doesn't much matter. What matters is catching the tide at the right time."
When the tide slackens and the water isn't moving, that's when the real spectacle begins. The Stripers school up and start prowling, becoming marauding bands chasing the great drifts of baitfish. Once the Stripers start in on the baitfish they turn the surface of the Bay a field of aquatic holes as the big fish gulp down the smaller ones and the air becomes thick with flying and fleeing baitfish. Even the seagulls and pelicans get involved in the roaming feast. The sky becomes filled with hundreds of bunched up birds wheeling and diving in a symphony of squawks and splashes as they pick the leftovers from the Stripers' messy picnic.
The fishing here is not difficult or technical. It offers rewards for all types of anglers: the hard–core seasoned veterans, fly–fishers, buddies out for a good time, parents taking children on their first ocean fishing trip, or groups looking to try something new.
The fish are so plentiful that Virginia Beach can honestly boast that a fish can be caught on almost every cast. Charter captains often hear their clients say they don't want to catch any more fish because their arms are tired from constantly reeling in fish.
Then there's the trophy hunter, that angler who is only interested in the big. It takes more work, fishing gear is more specialized, and that angler is willing to spend time searching for those really big fish. The "trophies" usually move into Virginia Beach's waters in December and January and hang around until April. It's not uncommon to hook up with numerous 30 pound to 40 pound fish; the state record was caught off Virginia Beach's shores and tipped the scales at more than 60 pounds.
Rudee Inlet and Lynnhaven Inlet are homes to Virginia Beach's sport fishing fleet. Fishing charters and head boat reservations can be made on the spot at each of the inlets, or by calling to make arrangements.