Amid the Mayhem of Breaking Fish, Best Keep a Calm Hand

I adopted the technique with the feather jig and quickly latched onto a 17-inch rockfish -- one-inch shy of keeper length but still plenty scrappy on light line. About the time I got it unhooked and safely back in the water, the feeding spree shut down and we were back to scanning the sky.

"There!" said Nicklason, and it was off to the races again.

So it went till the night sky dropped a curtain and the birds flapped off to wherever it is they go at dusk. All fishermen exaggerate, and the 30-inch fish our benefactors showed us was matched by only one we were able to intercept. Mostly it was bluefish but they were substantial, up to four pounds, and willing to smash bucktails, feather jigs, topwater poppers, soft plastic lures, flies and spoons indiscriminately.

Poppers proved the most entertaining as rockfish and blues launched themselves airborne in hot pursuit and slammed the surface lures with abandon, right before your gratified eyes. We released most unharmed, keeping just enough for dinner. Bluefish aren't much good after they've been frozen, so there was no need to make pigs of ourselves.

Three days later, George Turner, his son Drew and I sprinted across the bay at the crack of dawn in Turner's boat to see if the frenzy would repeat, but it didn't. We roamed the mouth of Eastern Bay from Kent Island to Tilghman Island, then shot out to the main Chesapeake to work the channel edges off Poplar Island, but never saw any significant surface action.

Still, we managed to catch a few nice blues near the bottom at the Gum Thickets, then a keeper rock and some more blues at Thomas Point, fishing deep with bucktails on a rushing ebb tide.

Some years are better than others for breaking fish and this one is shaping up so far as an off year. If you follow the Web site Tidalfish.com, you'll see reports of breaking fish here and there, but it's a big expanse of bay out there, and when you poke the nose of the boat out of the river, it's hard to say where they're going to crop up.

Then again, it gets better as the water cools. It was down to 73 degrees by Wednesday, five degrees lower than last weekend. Cool weather prompts predator fish to feed hard, and it gets better and better until the steel hand of winter clamps down in December.

So keep your eyes open. There's nothing as exhilarating as big, breaking fish churning the seas, with birds diving and bait fleeing. As an angler, you're part of it, right there in the mix, and when it's on fire it'll take your breath away.

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Breaking fish come and go. The most consistent reports lately have been from Cedar Point near the mouth of the Patuxent; Poplar Island across the Bay from Deale, Md.; Eastern Bay at the mouth and off Tilghman Point; and at Gum Thickets near Buoy 86, just north of Bloody Point.

Breaking fish generally are abundant in October and November around the Bay Bridge and at the mouth of the Potomac. A number of sportfishing guides specialize in light tackle and flyrod fishing for blues and rock; the ones with smaller, trailered boats have the most flexibility and mobility.

For a list of such guides, including C.D. Dollar, check the Web site CCAMD.org, and click on "Fishing Info," then "Guides."