Ever since I got my Kayak this summer, I wanted to plan a trip to a Virginia Barrier Island to surf fish the island and yak fish the rivers and cuts leading to it. With help from a member on this forum with experience yaking the islands, I decided to plan my trip to North Metompkin Island. I was staying in Chincoteague for the week fishing the surf so I was 45 minutes away from Gargatha landing. I launched at the turn of outgoing tide. At launch time there were -0- winds. It took about 1 hour to paddle to the backside of the island. I took 2 surf rods and 2 yak rods. I decided to troll a bucktail with a z-man white paddle tail and a purple z-man paddletail teaser on the second hook. Within 10 minutes had a flounder on the line. 15 1/2 inch. This action reoccurred 5 times on the paddle out. All undersized, all hit the purple teaser. When I got to the island, I pulled the yak up on the backside, put the wheels on and pulled it to the ocean side. Set up the 2 surf rods with hi/lo rigs and cut mullet. Spent 5 hours catching undersized flounder from the surf, a lot of little blues, one big bull nose ray, a sand bar shark, but no reds. The wind starting picking up in the afternoon, so about 1 hour from the tide change I decided to pack up and pull the yak to the back side of the island. Found a suitable launch area removed the wheels and left the yak on the beach to fish the backside with my bucktail rig since the outgoing tide was still moving pretty good. Every other cast was a flounder that hit on the purple z-man teaser. Caught 8 undersized flounder, almost every cast. I noticed that a local guy in a 19 ft skiff was anchoring his boat and I was talking about the island and tide change. He told me that when the tide changes out there it happens immediately. So I casted my rig and few more times and noticed the tide flow had changed, so I decided to head back in. On my way out I was paddled with the outgoing at a pace of 4.5 mph. Not so on the way back. As soon as I turned the first bend the strong south winds hit me and I realized this was going to be a long hard slow paddle back. I was paddling at a pace of 1 mph in the headwinds. If I stop paddling the winds blew me backwards so I kept paddling. It seems the guy I was talking to on the Island was heading back and saw me struggling and asked of I wanted a tow back to cut of the Gargatha river, it did not take me long to say yes. Once we made the turn into the Gargatha river the winds were behind me. I thanked the guy profusely for the tow and paddle the remainder of the way to the landing. I learned an important lesson that day. Not only plan the tides and winds at launch. You really need to figure out the winds on the return. Again I did not ask this guy his name but he saved me from a 2 1/2 hour hard paddle into head winds. All in all, it was a great day, a great experience, and a serious lesson learned.
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North Metompkin Adventure
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