Vacation for farmers sometimes only means waiting on parts or weather to keep working. For us, however, with a whole lot of overtime and planning ahead, it meant the real deal, or should I say, the reel deal. 

We took a jaunt down the East Coast to Chincoteague Island, where we stayed for a few days and took in the sights. The first of those sights, of course, was the inside of my eyelids. Day one was nothing less than an intensive catch-up day from the weeks of extra work, a six-hour car ride and the beginnings of that crazy heat wave that seemed to come from out of nowhere. 

After arriving at our destination at 3 a.m., we napped until almost lunchtime, followed by a brief afternoon nap and an early bedtime. Even as we arrived, though, the thoughts of farming pursued us as relentlessly as the endless rolling waves on the nearby beach. I honestly hadn’t thought of Chincoteague as a very agricultural area, but after getting stuck in a line trailing far out the door of the local ice cream shop amidst dozens of members of the Amish community, I began to take a closer look. 

I really shouldn’t have been so surprised, because Virginia is incredibly deep-rooted in agriculture, and the island is just a coastal part of the state. That being said, my imagination had been stoked, and I began to look at the local fisheries and small businesses as extensions of the same sector. 

Just because we can’t grow oysters here in PA that doesn’t mean down south they aren’t a major natural resource to be cultivated and harvested like any other crop. 

My boys enjoy sushi of all things, and since we were in a coastal town, we had to find some good fresh fish to eat while we were there. 

Ever since we started trout fishing with my oldest, the topic of eating fish has become a huge focus for him. Now we found ourselves discussing the litany of local fish in the salty harbor available for us to fish and hopefully eat. 

For any of my long-time readers, I used to write a blog for the River Reporter called Lure of the Week. I would like to think I have a good deal of experience fishing for inland and freshwater species, particularly in the Delaware River and surrounding lake regions. I would like to just say that my knowledge of how to fish for things like bass and trout contributes very little to my ability to fish saltwater anything. Different hardware, different bait, different water conditions, everything. 

Nevertheless, I brought some gear I happened to have for saltwater and brought it on our trip. 

I picked up my guest license and got the local advice from the bait shop owner, who told me to use bloodworms, and the family and I packed it out to a nice pier by the boat launch. I knew it was a good enough spot because the entire time we were there, the guys down the pier were pulling in flounder after flounder. Had I any clue what I was doing, I would have been able to copy their rig, but I’ll admit it was unfamiliar to me. As it turns out, it was all I could do to keep two little boys hooked up with worms and bobbers and preventing and handling regular tangles and dwindling patience. 

The way out here we enjoy the same things on vacation as we do at home. We just look a little silly trying to figure out what we don’t know when faced with learning curves. We didn’t catch any fish, but we had a good time, got out there, and can’t say we didn’t try. Perhaps next time I will Google flounder rigs before we go to the pier that doesn’t have any service. I won’t lie, though, the no-service part was a true advantage of being on vacation.