By Angus Phillips
Sunday, September 21, 2008
We've been buzzing around the mid-Chesapeake Bay for a month or so looking for telltale signs of surface-feeding schools of rockfish and blues, which make for some of the most exciting fishing in this region. It's been a hard slog with little success so far, but that makes it all the more satisfying when things finally fall into place.
"There they are, and it's the real deal," Capt. C.D. Dollar said last weekend as he piloted his speedy 23-footer down Eastern Bay off the southern tip of Kent Island. Jeff Nicklason and I were up forward, scanning for seagulls diving on bait being driven to the surface by ravenous predator fish. But it was Dollar in the back who spotted the birds.
It was a cool, windy evening that felt like fall, even though the calendar said fall was still a week away. Ribbons of high cloud streaked the sky, burnished by a setting sun. Only one small boat was anywhere near. We pulled alongside to see how the anglers aboard were faring.
"We have to go in now but you guys should definitely stick around," the young man at the helm said. "We've been on 'em for an hour or so and they're really nice fish. They come up and go down again, but they're not done. They'll be back."
He reached in the cooler and hoisted a glistening, 30-inch rockfish. "This is what we've been catching," he told us.
Enough said. I felt my heart rate bump and reached for a casting rod. Nicklason took up station in the bow with a flyrod and Dollar put one itchy palm on the wheel and the other on the throttle. Where, oh where, could they be?
"There!" said Dollar, throttling up and spinning the wheel so the bow pointed due south, smack into whitecaps. Two hundred yards away, the choppy gray waters parted as dorsal fins and broad backs of keeper-size rock and blues sliced the surface, and terrified baitfish skittered for their lives. Birds were on the move, too, soaring in to pick off any bait that ventured too close to the surface.
At times like that you wonder what it must be like down below, with the silversides jumbled in a tight, fleeing ball, big fish slashing away at the margins, caterwauling birds crashing down from on high and the fishing fleet boring in. In this case, it was a fleet of one. We had it all to ourselves. Nothing could be finer.
Dollar cut the engine upwind of the churning scrum and let the boat drift silently into casting range. He had a light rod rigged with a silver spoon, I had a light rod with a white feather jig tied on, two feet below a one-ounce, in-line sinker. Nicklason sported a chartreuse Clouser minnow on 300-grain sinking flyline.
The beauty of breaking fish is that when it's right, almost everything works. Capt. Norm Bartlett used to make up flies on the spot out of dollar bills, just for laughs. The difficult part is calming yourself down.
The tendency in all that mayhem is to cast out, then reel back in like a maniac, because everything seems to be happening so fast. But the predators are looking for easy pickings, knocking off injured or dying bait as it helplessly oak-leafs down in the water column.
Dollar, who guides sport anglers when he isn't editing a fishing magazine, proved the calmest and got the first hookup, a bluefish of about three pounds. "I'm not fishing it fast," he said of his wobbling Tony Acetta spoon. "I take two or three turns on the reel, then let it fall. They're banging it on the drop."
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.
* * *
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."
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