Actually have taken 3 salt trips out this year and won't take long to detail the first two.
On trip #1 I went alone mid-April. Main reason for the trip was to make sure the boat would run ok before taking company out on trips. Good thing I made the trip too as unfortunately the boat acted up. Ran, but ran rough -- thankfully a good tune up by Quinn at Parkway got things back in good running order with quick turn-around. As for fishing during the initial trip, the spots I hit for bait did NOT produce. Only managed to get two pins over about an hour targeting them. Made it to one of my cobia spots with them and they lasted all of about 10 minutes with one short grouper reeled in and the other bait stolen without a solid hook-up.
On trip #2 I had Ontiltttttt aboard. Definitely felt the pressure to find a cobia as going into the trip we had a history of 5 full years making trips together with at least a single cobia brought aboard every time out. Trip FRUSTRATINGLY found us struggling to catch bait just as I'd experienced during my first trip. Spent FAR too much time pulling in just a few pins off good looking grass so we moved out a bit deeper and strangely found we had a MUCH easier time catching pins in deeper areas with much more sparse grass mixed in with sand and rocky bottom.
The good news is we found one single cobe willing to play and were able to keep the streak alive. The bad news is it was short as were a half dozen or so others we sighted during the day. Tagged the one we caught and released it. Also caught a couple of short grouper and junk fish as we waited with hopes for a bigger cobe to appear.
We actually failed to hook the cobia the first go round... it ran with one of our baits and when we put tension on the line it dropped it. Pulling the bait up I saw it hadn't been cut by a shark or crushed by a grouper, and I suspected a cobia had taken it and might take it again. Before I could even drop the bait all the way back to the bottom the line ripped off on a STRONG run again. Round one with the cobia found us bringing it close to the boat only to have it do a deep dive and circle THREE other lines we still had down. With a mass of knots in the middle of the active line I thought for sure we'd lose the nice cobia to a break off but as a team everyone worked to keep the knotted lines pushed far enough down on the main line until we were able to reel the cobia just close enough to gaff it. Tale of the tape -- 44" cobia weighing in somewhere between 30 to 35 pounds (bringing it green we couldn't keep it still enough for the scale to completely settle). Made for a happy day being able to see my wife's family off with a cooler filled with tasty fish!
