Rocktober: The Best of Times on Chesapeake Bay

It's prime time on Chesapeake Bay as the calendar ticks down to the year's best month. Water temperatures dropped more than 10 degrees in the past few weeks to the low 70s. North winds roil the surface, but the water is clearer as summer algae blooms die off. Fish are hungry.

Anglers call it "Rocktober" as rockfish abandon summer haunts up the rivers, moving into shallows to fatten up before heading for deep holes to ride out winter. They're easier to catch, and not just rock. Bluefish school and feed voraciously before heading to wintering grounds in the ocean, crabs are on the move south to bury in mud and white perch gather in deep holes to gobble worms and shrimp.

It's the best of times: Fine fishing and a good time to lift up your head and look around. "I take people out and they're just amazed at how beautiful it is," says George Turner, who grew up gazing at the Severn River from his childhood home alongside the Naval Academy, where he has since raised his own family. After a half-century, his eyes may not be as sharp but the view is undiminished.

We are riding west across the bay in Turner's 25-footer toward an orange glow that lights the night sky over Annapolis. The Bay Bridge, where we have sparred with stiff winds and eaten up an evening boating a modest mess of bluefish and one plump, keeper-size rock, glitters behind us, all winking lights, and the towers at Greenbury Point signal the way home.

"How do you know where you're going?" asks Kevin Kenno, one of the top bridge fishermen, who lives in Gaithersburg and usually launches his small skiff at Sandy Point State Park, which is easy to find at night -- just follow the bridge pilings till you hit land. Big, open water is new to him.

Turner gooses the throttle to climb over a grey-topped comber and points to the Greenbury towers, which used to beam signals to the Navy's far-flung submarine fleet before there were satellites. "Just keep the towers on the right," he says, "and watch for crab pots."

The breeze is up, 15 to 20 knots as predicted, but on the stern, boosting us along, ka-thump, ka-thump. Clouds over town look menacing and it's starting to spit rain. Turner steps from behind the console to stand in the wet and steer one-handed, the better to dodge crab pots. "You wonder how a crab ever makes it into the Severn River," he says.

It's been a good fishing night at the bridge. With Rocktober around the corner, it will just get better.

The bridge is a fish magnet. It was built for economy's sake where the bay is narrowest, a little more than four miles across, so the tide gets squeezed and runs hard. It runs fastest around obstructions, of which there are hundreds in the form of pilings. On the pilings grow barnacles and vegetation where little critters burrow. Perch, blues and rockfish seeking a free meal hang around the bridge, waiting for bait to sweep by with the tide or burying their noses in the vegetation to root morsels out.

Feeding time follows a cycle. Rockfish feed on a rushing tide; perch bite best when the tide slows. And bluefish? "They're always hungry," Turner says with a chuckle.

Currents are complex. It can ebb on the Western Shore, flood on the Eastern Shore and be slack in the middle, or vice-versa. It's as affected by wind as it is by moon and sun; you can never be sure where and when it's going to run.

Perch feed on the bottom, mostly in the deep. Bluefish can be anywhere from the surface on down. Sometimes they churn topwater, slashing bait, and all you have to do is throw something near to get a hit. Rockfish may be deep or shallow but generally hang close to the pilings. They'll strike bucktails or big plastic jigs like Bass Assassins or Bass Kandy Delights, dead-drifted close to the pilings with the current.