Rocktober report

The fall has always been my favorite time to target Rockfish casting spoons, plastics and top water. I like when the big fish come in in the spring and summer and even winter fishing, but no matter the time of year, fall is the time I'm always waiting for. The larger schoolies always usually arrive around September, but every year is different in the upper bay, this year I caught fish over 30" in September but not as many as usual, October is when it got good. I went out on 14 trip in October and caught (and released) fish over 30" on every trip except one, and on that one trip the biggest fish was 29", I had a couple trips where I caught more fish over 30" that I could even caught, just one after another for hours. the biggest in October was 36", but I also had a couple days where the biggest was 35", and about half of my trips I managed fish to 34". Its been one of my best falls in about 5 years, and probably my best October ever.                                                                                                                                                                                  the real trick to getting them was fishing shallow lumps, and lots of stealth, areas where boats are running all over the fish were almost always avoided, the bigger fish don't like the sound of boat motors, they know we are their biggest predators. I would generally try many spots, until I find them, sometimes they were where I found them in the previous trips, and sometimes they were in other locations, but they always stayed in the same 3 mile radi
us. Ironically, as good as this fall has been in the upper bay for the larger fish, I haven't seen the large schools of smaller fish like usual, where you could basically run to many spots and catch all the smaller keepers you want for hours. this past summer was actually like that which was also unusual, I often commented that this past summer reminded me of the average fall, not sure where the smaller fish went, but some say they moved south to the mid bay already. It does seem like the reports are increasing down that way
EDIT...went out on my last trip (October 31) and got totally skunked, first skunk since March, to make matters worse I hooked up with over ten drag peeling fish, and everyone got off. Im not sure what was happening. I also thought I got a snag once, but it turned out to be a big fish, it took off and snapped my line, must be a Halloween curse LOL