In November 2020, my wife and I loaded our bicycles onto the back of our pickup truck and took a short trip to Virginia Beach, Virginia. We spent 3 nights at Ocean Keys Resort across the road from the beach. The sand was cooled between our toes as we watched the sunrise while walking along the beach. We went on bike rides, walked along the boardwalk, and ate at a few seafood restaurants. We drove to First Landing State Park where we visited the Chesapeake Bay and went on a bicycle ride. It was a fun and relaxing time. The weather was nice and we sat on our balcony one evening entertaining ourselves watching the valets park cars at a seafood restaurant across the road.
On our last day, we arose early, checked out of the resort, got a cup of coffee, and went to the boat dock where we boarded up and left at 8 am for a day of deep-sea fishing. My wife didn’t know how she would handled the motion of the boat, but she was a champion. She didn’t get sick and enjoyed the day.
We rode for over two hours before arriving at our first fishing spot. My wife caught three black sea bass before I got a bite. I finally caught a couple of small bass, and then everyone reeled their lines in and we went to another spot. We did that several times, but everyone was catching fish. When it slowed up, we would reel in the lines and move again. Several people started catching triggerfish at one spot, and I caught one also. I had never heard of a triggerfish before, but it was a good size fish, with good sized teeth as well.
While out in the ocean, away from the sight of land, we saw several laden cargo ships and other types of working boats. Dominion Energy’s two new wind turbines were seen with 27 miles from the coast with their blades lazily catching a breeze. It was a fun day that was warm when in the sun and cool when in the shade. We were dressed for the weather and kept comfortable.
Before we knew it, it was time to head back to shore. We reeled in our lines for the last time and headed back inland around 3 pm. We weren’t supposed to get back to the docks until 5 pm. Since we still had 3 hours to drive to get back home after arriving at the docks, we decided to pay the extra few dollars and have them clean and fillet our fish on board. We ended up keeping 1 triggerfish and 11 black sea bass, not too bad for a day’s outing.
After riding for a while, the sun began going down quickly, but no land was in sight. It was 5 pm, and we were still a long way off. We saw the Chesapeake Light Tower and after a while we spotted land, but it was still far off. It eventually became dark, and we were still a long way out. We spotted a commercial fishing boat with thousands of sea gulls following close behind. At around 6:30 pm, we made our way back into Rudee Inlet. We disembarked from the boat and headed to the truck. It was a good day fishing.
With the Atlantic Ocean in our rearview mirror, we stopped for gas and a bathroom break before heading back home. We were tired and still had our sea legs, which we discovered while stopping for a quick meal on the way home, we could feel ourselves swaying while standing still. When we finally made it back home around 10:15 pm, we were glad we paid to have the fish filleted. We rinsed the fish off and put them in the refrigerator before taking a shower and hopping into bed. It was a good trip to the beach.