thezone

Bridge Lights,

It's often thought of by fishermen that when the sun goes down
the fishing is over unless you want to fish for bottom feeders
but that is hardly the case and some of your best action can
start an hour or two after the sun has gone down.

There have been so many times that I have left the dock in the
early morning hours to go trolling, casting lures and bait fishing
out in the Chesapeake Bay and have had a stripe on my back (skunked)
once the sun has gone down for the day and it's so called over for
the day and fishing on the Chesapeake Bay.

When I use to go fishing with my buddies we would always joke with
each other on whom was sporting a stripe on their back during
the progress of the day and it was not a badge of honor to
wear as we all know we all love to joke with each other on how
we are doing and there is that buddy that always teases you as
part of the fun.

Never the less, these were always the best days of my life,
the anticipation, being out on the bay to forget about all the
daily drudges of life, the comadarie and the anticipation of what
could happen. It's honestly one of the most enjoyable things
in life when all of this comes together and one of the most
anticipated the night before and the day you are going out fishing.

It's here on one of these fishing trips that I first learned
about night fishing and the bridge lights as it would usually
take about an hour and a half time of cruisng from the the eastern
shore at Kent Island near Eastern Bay once the sun had gone down
to get baqck home on the South River.

It was here on a fall night after a day out on the Chesapeake Bay
and all of us were wearing stripes on our backs after being out
on the bay for about 8 hours. As we made our way back up the South
River towards the South River bridge in the 6 knot area I decided to
grab my rod as we made our way under the bridge, I casted out a
green bucktail from the top of the cabin and right away got a huge
hit on the bucktail near the piling we were cruising by, I played
the fish and reeled it in and it was an 8 LB rockfish! We had
been out all day dragging lures, etc... with nothing and here on
the first cast I got an 8 LB rockfish! I immediately slowed the boat
and circled the pilings where everyone could cast and we proceeded
to catch two more right away!

After thinking about what had gone on it became obvious that the
bridge lights were attracting minnows to the surface and the rockfish
were hanging just below the surface. We tried 5 inch diving surface
plugs also and would reel in these plugs in a full rod length jerking
motion then let the plug set for a second and repeat and there would
be an explosion on the surface as the rockffish would hit the plug
then we would set the hook and the fish would thrash and explode on
the surface once hooked then the drag of the reel would take off
and we would eventually tire the fish and thumb land the fish.

After an evening of this which was repeated many times over if
you examined your thumb afterwards you noticed you had "bass thumb".
This is where the tiny teeth or abrasive mouth of the bass would scratch
the back side of your thumb and the more bass you caught and landed the
more torn up the backside of your thumb would be.

This now became part of the fishing trip out to the Chesapeake Bay.
We always knew that if we didn't catch anything all day long in the
bay that we could rely on "TheZone" as a second fishing trip on the
way back. The name "TheZone" is where my handle name comes from and
was named that back in 1992.

There is one little extra thing that I noticed when fishing the bridge
at night in the fall months. The best fishing seems to be when the
leaves start falling off the trees and floating down the river under
the lights of the bridge at night. I'm not sure exactly why but it
may make the rockfish curious as to what is on the surface or the
bait fish may sit underneath them or both.

TheZone

run out

I fished the CBBT day and nite at nite they come up to the lites and sit back in the shadow line
in the darkness wating for the bait fish that is attracted to the lites. i have seen them lined up
like a horse race about to start, the boat drifted over them and they just drop down a couple of feet and pop up on the other side when the boat drifts over them rite on the line. Man it is something too see. Then the bait moves in and it's a free for all, they jump, splash, chase, and
run as far as the eye can see. Now some times on a full moon on a clear nite you mite not do as
good fishin the lites of the bridge. It took me a while to figure it out but Chester [Old salt] conf-
ifmed it, he said [rest his soul] "heck yea you dummy, those can feed any they want at nite on a
full moon, they don't need the bridge lites during that time" And of coarse Chet was usally rite,
i would be riding back and run up on a large flock of birds feeding in the middle of nowhere on a
full moon, stop and start slaying feeding rockfish.

thezone

run out,

That was a very good follow up. To get into a little more detail
what we usually ended up doing was to position the boat directly
under the bridge close to a piling and cast out upwards of 100 feet
or so out into the shadow area beyond that of the bridge lights then
work the lures out of the shadow area towards the bridge lights
area and it was close to that area in the lights from that position
of the boat under the bridge where the most hits seemed to occur.

Now let me expand on this a bit further though, we would also
motor the boat parallel to the bridge but from "out in" the shadow
area of the bridge and then cast back in towards the pilings of the
bridge shadow area and work the lures out from beneath the bridge
into the bridge lights and get about the same results. It seemed to
work from either direction as well.

The advantage to motoring or patrolling the outer shadow area
of the bridge is that you could run parallel to the bridge and
cast in under the shadow of the bridge in the area of each piling
and cover a lot more ground as you worked the pilings and once you
got to cover say ten or twenty pilings then you could start to work
your way back on the other side and repeat what you were doing
then loop back around. Of course all of this may be very tide and
weather related.


TheZone