Fishing and Hunting on Chincoteague Island

The Refuge Inn is a 72-room hotel, owned by the same family since 1973, at the entrance to Chincoteague National Wildlife Refuge. Several of us hunt. One of us guides. One of us judges the world championship for decoy carving. We’ll pack your breakfast and put the coffee out the night before, because we’ll be on the marsh in the morning, same as you.

Chincoteague is the island people live on. Assateague is the barrier island in front of it, and the Virginia end of Assateague is the refuge. That leaves water on all four sides of us: Chincoteague Bay, the Assateague and Chincoteague channels, and the ocean past Assateague. Across the bridge the refuge keeps more than 2,600 acres of managed freshwater pools to hold waterfowl through the winter.

Black ducks are the mainstay. Atlantic brant winter in the channels from November into late March. Surf scoters gather in big floating flocks beyond the breakers. Buffleheads fill the channels and bays in numbers, and they are what locals take their kids and grandkids out for. Hunters come from out of state, and occasionally from overseas, because you can take several species on one trip.

Most visiting duck hunters book a guide. Guided hunts work the marsh, the channels and the open bay around the island, so there is no refuge permit involved. The wind, weather and tide decide the day.

Reed & Reel Fishing Company hunts sea ducks and divers on Chincoteague Bay, and will switch to Atlantic brant if that is what you are after. They also run a cast and blast — a morning on the ducks followed by casting for striped bass — which is a good day out if your party cannot agree on what it came for.

We also send guests to Wildcat Waterfowl, run by Hunter Leonard. He is the one of us who guides. He grew up on this water and holds a captain’s license. Black ducks, Atlantic brant and surf scoters, small groups, and a hunt built around what you want and what the weather gives you.

Assateague, the barrier island across from Chincoteague, holds whitetail deer and sika. Sika are not deer at all — they are a small east Asian elk, turned loose on the island in the 1920s, and they took to the place so well that most of what comes off Assateague now is sika. They are smaller than a whitetail, they hold in the marsh, and they will make you work for it.

The refuge runs the hunt on the Virginia portion of Assateague, daily except Sundays, during the Virginia season. You need a refuge permit on top of your state license.

Some of our repeat hunters split the trip — sika on the island, whitetail on the mainland in a friend’s stand. The mainland is private land, so that half comes down to who you know. If you have the connection, we are a short drive from both.

Chincoteague has one of the oldest decoy carving traditions on the East Coast. Ira Hudson, Miles Hancock, Doug Jester and Delbert “Cigar” Daisey all worked here. People still carve here, and the birds are still made to float.

Ira Hudson worked without patterns, so no two of his birds came out the same, and he is thought to have carved more than twenty thousand of them. Miles Hancock made his oversized and cheap, out of cottonwood, with flat bottoms and paddle tails — built to be used rather than admired. The two of them worked together to keep up with orders: Hancock carved and Hudson painted. Doug Jester was a waterman who carved fast and sold cheap, so an ordinary hunter could afford a rig.

About fifteen people still carve on the island, though most of it now is decorative rather than working birds. Hancock’s workshop was given to the Museum of Chincoteague after he died and is kept as he left it, shavings and half-finished birds and all. Island carvers work in that shed on Saturdays in season, which is the best chance you will get to watch it done. Hunter wrote more about all of this in Chincoteague Wildfowl Traditions.

Saturday, February 6, 2027, 9am to 4pm at the Chincoteague Center. Live carving, antique decoys on display, and buying, selling and swapping. Five dollars, and children under twelve are free.

Easter weekend at the Chincoteague Combined School. It has run for more than forty years, with carvers alongside painters, photographers and potters.

If you want to take one home, the Rookery is our gift shop off the lobby, and Art curates the decoy collection in it. There have been decoys for sale at this inn for a long time — before he was carving himself he was buying birds from island carvers and reselling them here. What is on the shelf changes, and some of it is his.

You do not need to buy a fishing license at four public spots in town, because the town covers it: the pier at Veterans Memorial Park on Eastside Road, the pier at the Robert N. Reed, Sr. Downtown Waterfront Park on Main Street, the Town Dock, and Curtis Merritt Harbor. You do still have to register, free, with the Virginia Fisherman Identification Program. That applies to everyone, including anglers who are exempt from licensing and anyone fishing on an out-of-state license.

Memorial Park is the easiest of the four to take a child to. It has a fishing and crabbing pier, restrooms, a playground and a boat ramp. Croaker and spot are the summer standbys off these piers, with flounder, kingfish and small sea bass mixed in.

Flounder are what the island is known for, and they hold in the channels and over the flats. Speckled trout, bluefish and red drum come through with the season, and the Blackfish Bank artificial reef sits about six miles off.

To launch your own boat you need a town launch permit, sold at the Town Office on Community Drive and by the police department when the office is closed. There are ramps at Curtis Merritt Harbor at the south end of the island, at the Town Dock on Main Street, on Eastside Road, at Fir Landing off Deep Hole Road, and at Memorial Park. Curtis Merritt is the one to use if you are going out for the day: paved parking, finger piers, a floating pier and a fish cleaning station, and it puts you into the harbor, with the Assateague and Chincoteague channels right there and an easy run out the inlet to the ocean. The bay is up north, so you run through the channels to get to it.

Beach Road starts just past the inn, runs to the refuge entrance and carries on out to the beach.

Inside the refuge you can fish marked areas of Tom’s Cove and Swan Cove, or from the beach outside the lifeguarded stretch. Off the beach it is mostly kingfish, flounder and bluefish, with red drum and striped bass the fish people come for. To fish after dark you need an overnight permit from the Herbert H. Bateman Educational and Administrative Center.

Tom’s Cove Hook is the long spit of sand at the south end. It closes each spring while the piping plovers nest, opens to walkers around September 1 once the chicks have fledged, and closes again on March 15. Walking it is three to nine miles of soft sand, depending how far out you go.

Driving on the beach needs a four-wheel-drive and an over-sand vehicle permit. The South zone is open most of the year but shuts through the height of the nesting season. The North zone is open from March 15 to August 31, and only to people who are there to fish.

Chincoteague is on the seaside of the Eastern Shore, with the Atlantic and the coastal bays out the front door. The Chesapeake is on the other side of the peninsula, about half an hour’s drive, and it fishes differently. You drive over for it — Billy Reed trailers his boat across when he runs those days.

Rockfish is what people go over for. Striped bass hold in the bay through the cold months, which puts the best of it in the same weeks as the duck season. Those are Leonards in the picture, on a November trip over there. The bay is regulated separately from the coast, with its own size limits and open dates, and the rules have tightened two years running, so check the Virginia Marine Resources Commission for the current year rather than last year’s.

Capt. Steve’s Bait and Tackle is at 6527 Maddox Blvd, half a mile down the road from the inn, and has been family-owned since 1992. They sell licenses, gear and bait, and they will tell you what is biting. Their Spring Flounder Tournament runs for ten days from late April.

Reed & Reel Fishing Company runs guided trips out of Curtis Merritt Harbor. Captain Billy Reed is a Chincoteague local, born and raised on the water with generations of family before him, a USCG-certified captain and a Saltwater Cowboy himself. He fishes the island’s channels and bays from a 21-foot Carolina Skiff and runs longer days down to the Chesapeake, and if you pass the ponies on the way he can tell you more about them than most. He also offers a sunrise pony tour, which is a good answer for anyone in the party who would rather watch horses than hold a rod.

You can crab a quarter mile from our front desk, off the boardwalks by the refuge entrance gates, and along Beach Road from there. A line, a net, a bucket and chicken necks is the whole kit. The pier at Veterans Memorial Park is as good for crabbing as it is for fishing. Clamming is allowed in Tom’s Cove with a rake and a basket; look for the keyhole, the little breathing hole a clam leaves in the mud. Capt. Steve’s or the Virginia Marine Resources Commission can give you the current limits.

If you would rather be shown how, Art’s sons Hunter and Ayden run shellfish trips through Cowboy Cruise Company on a six-passenger boat. The Shellfish Tour takes you out to the beds where the clams and oysters are raised, to dig your own clams and pick oysters out of the floats they grow in. Rakes, gloves and bags come with the trip, and you can take your clams home to steam if you want them. Oysters are shucked and eaten on the water, as many as you care to eat, and Hunter will teach you to open them the way islanders do. The Teaguer Tour goes all the way around the island, stopping for ponies, wildlife and island history before working the same grounds.

The Museum of Chincoteague filmed a lecture where waterfowl guide Andy Linton tells stories and shows how a crab pot is made. Andy is an old friend of ours — his hunting clients have stayed here for years, and he and Art cook oyster fritters side by side at the carnival every summer. We wrote about Andy and Nancy West a while back.

• Chincoteague National Wildlife Refuge — hunting, fishing and permits
• Capt. Steve’s Bait and Tackle — licenses, gear, bait and reports
• Chincoteague Chamber of Commerce — hunting guides and fishing charters
• Wildcat Waterfowl — guided waterfowl hunting
• Cowboy Cruise Company — shellfish and island tours
• Reed & Reel Fishing Company — guided inshore and Chesapeake fishing
• Museum of Chincoteague Island — island history and collections
• The Ward Foundation — wildfowl art and the Ward World Championship