A Tale of Two Piers

For the walk this week, which was quite a long one if you add up all of the going back and forth we were doing at the time lol, I am taking you along for the fishing piers that we visited recently when we were on vacation!

Fishing piers are something that we've never been able to experience but knew that we certainly wanted to. With my son being such an avid fisherman and outdoorsman, my wife knew that when we were on our vacation that we should fit fishing in somehow. We were originally thinking that we were going to rent a charter or something but that was pretty expensive! So instead we opted for exploring the ocean fishing atmosphere via a pier and man was it awesome!

For this though, we thankfully ended up experiencing a couple different ones! One of them was a no-frills pier, with just wood, benches and a really long ass pier for you to experience. This is okay for some situations but when it comes to our first time fishing, it made it one that was pretty damn boring! There was really nobody on the pier except for one really nice woman that ended up helping us out quite a bit.

We were chatting with her, with our son, and learned a bunch of cool different things about the area and fishing from the piers. She was getting some decent luck with what she was using but we weren't catching squat. She passed on her sage advice and we still didn't catch anything which was okay but it was good to hear from a local on some of the tips, as that was our very first time fishing from a pier!

One of the things that she passed on for advice was that there was a nice pier about 35 minutes south of where we were at with her and that it would likely be a better pier as it was a bit more lively and had some good action. This ended up being the case for sure! The pier was a little more expensive than the previous one though, which is why the woman didn't want to go to that one which was fine.

We got to the pier and got to check out the different things going on with it. At this time of year, it's not surprising that the owners of the pier are spending time to fix up things while they can before the fishing season really starts to heat up so they were fixing the end of it here, which made it off limits for us. That was a little sad but we are already planning our trip back in a few months.

We got to see some cool stuff such as this construction barge! I don't know if I've seen one of these ocean rigs up close before so that was pretty damn cool lol. They only used it in the last hour or so we were there because they were gathering supplies the entire morning. They were moving these massive 50 foot chemically soaked poles from the flat bed trailer onto the sand and moving them a few hundred feet into the storage area. I wonder how they are going to get the poles from the sand, which is I would say over 1,500 feet away, out to the barge area here.

This pier was definitely a lot more lively! It had far more people on it, maybe because it was also quite a bit wider and larger than the other one, but it also had a fun little stage area and stuff. The bathrooms were nice and clean as well which is a big benefit. If you're out here, the last thing you want to deal with is a disgusting bathroom lol.

The end of the pier here was where it was at! A lot of people were all over the place trying to find their little section of the action but the end here was where the hottest action was going on. This was luckily the spot that we were at! We did get to this pier first thing in the morning lol. When our son is excited for something, as soon as he gets up he's ready to go! I think we stepped foot onto the pier at 8am which is pretty damn early for my wife hahaha. It worked out though because the early birds get the best spots! There were a few guys there when we got there but they cleared out relatively soon after we got there, making room for us to move over!

The little man made fast friends with everyone around us. He is way more outgoing and adventurous when it comes to people than we are! I do think it was largely because these were all older men and he loves to chat it up with adults! He does with kids as well but he loves a good conversation with an adult and the grandfather-age guys were loving it we could tell. They were sharing stories, secrets and all kinds of stuff with him so it ended up being a really great time.

We made quite a few friends on the different piers that's for sure! We are glad that the little community of fisherfolk are pretty open and welcoming of newcomers, as we all know what it's like to go somewhere we aren't familiar and trying to just throw a line in the water to catch some stuff! We are absolutely looking forward to going back in a few months and will go right back to this pier here and likely try to plan something in the fall as well.

The two piers were definitely a lot different from each other but each of them had their own qualities. When we go back, we are certainly going to go to the bigger one but I think we will also visit the other one as well so that we can get another feel for the place and make sure that we are spreading our horizons a little bit, not focusing on just one section!