Jigging at the Bay Bridge

Type: Tidal
Region: Central
Location: Chesapeake Bay Bridge

I took my Dad out for a few hours of fishing on Satuday 10/29. It was breezy and the water was rough on the bay as we headed out from the Magothy. We ran over to the Bay Bridge to do some light tackle jigging around the rock piles. The bite was fairly slow the first hour or so and most of the fish we caught were in the 12-16" range. As the day progressed, the wind died down and the water began to calm. We decided to change up tactics and do some jigging around the bridge pilings, hoping to get into some bigger fish. As we drifted away from a set pilings we were fishing, we pulled our lines in and began to set up for another pass. Before I could get the boat started I noticed a bunch of marks on the sonar down near the bottom. We scrambled to get our jigs back in the water and almost immediately hooked into fish. We both managed to land our biggest fish of the season, mine being 31" and my Dad's 27". After trying unsuccessfully to locate the school of fish again, we took some pictures and headed back to the bridge. We managed to locate a set of pilings that were holding a group of larger fish. My dad landed a 22" and I got a similarly sized fish up to the boat before it got off the hook. We were just about to call it quits and head in when I hooked into another fish and landed a fat 27".