Met up with Sharkman at 6:30am to head out of Saint Marks... first time I've been there in a couple of years as Econfina is my preferred area, but due to the low tide we wanted to err on the safe side heading out at dark-thirty
Actually left the ramp with dawn's first light just starting to show and it was stunningly pretty...
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So instead of fishing live pins, we started dropping a few dead ones as well as fishing a few jigs. Soon as we drop the first dead pin in the water, Sharkman and I had something happen neither of us had experienced... we had a squid (close to 1 foot long) race up to the bait and latch on. It was so determined to hold on, we were able to use my dip net to snatch it and put it on the end of one of our jigs. INSTANTLY had a short grouper slam it on the bottom. Water visibility was great so I was actually able to watch the grouper take the squid as it reached the bottom.Saw a few more fish swimming around the bottom but not tons and things stayed a bit slow. It was so calm that if our bait had lived, I would have opted to run out deeper. Was somewhat shocked that we had the marker 24 area completely to ourselves for almost a full hour. After about an hour, we had another boat show up and to be honest we didn't mind having company but DID mind what they did. They motored up to within about 10 feet to ask if we had any luck, and then proceeded to do circles about 20 feet from us checking out the bottom (not trolling, just looking at their fish finder)... after about 5 circles around our boat, they threw a marker out about 10 feet from us and then anchored, reanchored, and reanchored again, each time missing their spot but coming within 10 to 20 feet of us, only to motor up again and do more circles. After what felt like 30 minutes, we decided enough was enough and moved to another spot. Would be more understanding if we had been fishing a small structure but for pete's sake... it's a BARGE
At our second spot we dropped a chum bag of frozen scallop guts I had been saving in the freezer for over a year and the cobia bite was on almost instantaneously!
Sharkman quickly boated several nice ones...
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The first three we caught were all singles caught 10 to 20 minutes apart but during Sharkmans next hook up, we had five swim up together and I dropped a bait down giving us a double hook up. Both were keepers and gave us a handful with us dancing around one another, ducking under one another's line, and doing our best to keep them from wrapping us in the anchor line/diving to the bottom and cutting us off on structure. We landed both, and noticed Sharkman's looked like it had just recently faced another trial...
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By the 2:00pm high tide, we were tired and hot enough we called it a day. Having not been out the past few months, the return to the water with a great cobia day was perfect. Due to having a good bit of meat in the freezer, we tagged the cobia we caught and all were released to fight another day.
