Every once in a blue moon outdoorsmen who fish and hunt, have to get away from it all. You know, the avid fishermen, or hunter who is obsessed with catching the biggest or most fish. Maybe they just have to go fishing every time they get a spare minute off from work.

    And it might be a good idea to take a family vacation every now and then, and leave the rods and guns behind. I know it’s hard to believe but that’s just what I did on a recent whirlwind trip across the “South”. Our destination, picked out by my wife Kathy, was Chincoteague Island, Virginia, which if you didn’t know, is on the Eastern Shore of Virginia on the other side of the Chesapeake Bay, some 19 hours away by driving time!

    “How in the world did you find out about Chincoteague Island,” I asked my wife? “Oh, I’ve always known about it, since I read Misty of Chincoteague as a little girl,” she explained! In 1947 Marguerite Henry penned the now famous “Misty of Chincoteague” children’s book based upon a real Chincoteague pony that has captivated the hearts of youngsters ever since.

    It seems that back in the early days, before we were even a country, the Spanish Explorers came over and some of the Ponies they brought with them escaped to the islands on the Atlantic Ocean side of the Eastern Shore.

    Their descendants now hold a place of honor on the islands as they are the focus of the Island’s tourist attractions. Each year they have a pony round up and swim as the ponies are herded across the bay onto the island where many of them are auctioned off to help control the herd and raise funds for their preservation. And to go along with the pony attraction, there are plenty of things to do such as kayaking, fishing, swimming on the beaches, shopping and a host of other things in the way of exploring the islands.

Seafood Galore

    And one of the highlights of my trip to the old south was eating plenty of fresh seafood in the way of shrimp, grilled, fried and steamed, along with oysters, crab and other assorted culinary delights!

    Did I mention that there is also a National Wildlife Refuge on its sister island, Assateague Island, complete with a beach, plenty of waterfowl in season, and filled with wild ponies, deer and even sika elk. Yes, the island even has its own “elk herd” consisting of some 2,000 or so exotic sika elk imported from a far away land by a local and deposited on the islands around 1930.

    While traveling through the original South, in northern Virginia I was struck by just how much it looked like Mississippi, with its rural farms filled with wheat, corn and beans. The surrounding woodlands were also populated by pine plantations and mixtures of pine and oaks in places, and sure enough they even had cutovers and deer stands dotting the landscape here and there.

    While I had the pleasure of swimming the beaches of Virginia Beach and freezing in the still frigid and powerful waters of the Atlantic Ocean on Assateague, I yearned for something more. And I found it in the way of kayaking. Yes, I went online and Googled “Kayaking the Chincoteague” and found the Pocomoke River Canoe Company in Snow Hill, Maryland just a short distance away on the Pocomoke River!

    While we could have kayaked on the island I was intrigued about the Pocomoke River, so we headed a few miles further north and explored the Pocomoke for a few hours. Much to my surprise the river was beautiful yet devoid of any large bass boats or other boaters. The pristine waters were surrounded by beautiful woodlands including cypress trees, making it look much like home.

And Fish Too!

    The river was also filled with familiar lily pad fields and fish, lots of fish! It seems that the striped bass had come up the river from the Chesapeake Bay and were spawning on their yearly spawning run. And the area was also filled with largemouth bass, with nobody fishing for them at the time. Fish were boiling and rolling on the surface and not an angler was to be seen anywhere.

    In a moment of weakness my mind raced to figure out a way to get one fishing trip on the water before returning to “The Promised Land and my beloved Mississippi”. Alas, my family trips usually are reserved for family fun and relaxation, as I hunt and fish almost year round. If I’d only known about the Pocomoke River a day earlier, I might have secured a guide and a boat and caught a fish or two.

    As it was, I did get to spend a wonderful time traveling through several southern states enjoying the bountiful food and beautiful countrysides ranging from the mountains of North Carolina to the beaches of the Eastern Shore. But if you take a hankering to go up east, plan ahead for a day of fishing or kayaking on the Pocomoke River near Snow Hill, Maryland, or on Chincoteague Island. For more information about the Pocomoke River Canoe Company contact them at 800-258-0905, or online at PaddlethePocomokeatYahoo.com.

    Contact  Mike Giles at 601-917-3898

or e-mail him at mikegiles18@comcast.net