Virginia’s Eastern Shore sometimes seems like a forgotten cousin. It’s rural and agricultural, lightly populated, a thin finger of land that points southward toward the much larger metropolitan area of Hampton Roads. But this time of year, when the weather can be numbing at times, the Eastern Shore is a Mecca of sorts, as a handful of hardy souls converge on Kiptopeke State Park, a sanctuary just a couple miles from the peninsula’s southernmost point.
Kiptopeke is known for bird watching—it happens to be along a major thoroughfare for migratory birds—and for the network of trails through its preserved coastal habitat. But that’s not why these folks are here. No, they’re interested in what lies just offshore: a breakwater, nine mammoth concrete ships, partially sunk, arranged in two neat lines. Or more accurately, they’re drawn by the creatures that inhabit these hulking remains.
Wait…concrete ships?
That’s right. Ships made out of concrete. More on that later.
Kiptopeke’s iconic concrete ships once housed seamen, but now, seven decades later, they’re home instead to a thriving ecosystem. It’s a food chain that folks in the tiniest of watercraft seek to engage. At any given point of the day or night, the concrete ships are rimmed by kayakers, fishermen trolling eels at the watery base of the ships’ ghostly ruins. Most hope to land a striped bass, icon of the Chesapeake Bay. For those who happen to hook up, the payoff is magnificent. 30-pound stripers are common, a 40-pounds-plus not unheard of.
The prosperous ecosystem at Kiptopeke’s concrete ships is a product of structure, moving water and salinity, according to Lewis Gillingham, director of the Virginia Saltwater Fishing Tournament. Most adult stripers are on their way out of the bay, or have popped in briefly from the ocean for a meal or two before heading offshore to deeper, warmer water. Gillingham says that stripers’ happiness index is best in water below 70 degrees. When the temperature falls to 50 degrees, they seek comfort elsewhere.
This scene likewise provides ideal conditions for another species that kayak anglers target this time of year. The tautog, gun metal-gray and almost clownish looking with its big lips, is excellent table fare, much like the striper. Gillingham describes the tautog, or tog as it’s known in angling circles, as a lurker, a torpid fish that’s quite at home in the shadows of the biofouling community of underwater structure, popping out to pluck a tasty morsel that floats past its hiding place. Tautogs don’t get as big as stripers—a large one is nine pounds—but the concrete ships are no doubt home to some of the species’ healthiest.
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