Back In The Saddle Again
Posted: May 1st, 2017, 12:12 pm
Been over 6 months since Marine's Dream touched salt water so a few weeks ago I started trying to line up a trip with Bman. Several of the last few years we'd made early trips out together for cobia and they all had proved fairly successful as well as fairly entertaining (both lost monster cobes due to "logistics" slip-ups by the other 
).
Well, this spring twice in a row, things just didn't work out. Though Bman somehow never seems to let business get in the way of duck hunting trips (
), he kept pulling the Lucy Van Pelt "Peanuts" football yanking trick (WE GOT TO GO!!! WAIT, NOW I CAN'T GO AS I GOT'S TO FATTEN THE BANK ACCOUNT!") leaving this poor Charlie Brown struggling to get his cobia game back on.
So this past week after Bman yanked the football away for the second time I gave a short-notice holler to forum member Rhettley and being a fine fellow with his priorities in the right place he agreed to make a trip out with less than 24 hours notice.
With neither of us having been out in many moons, prep work found us getting out a bit late to launch in the skinny waters of my beloved Econfina, or for that matter even the lighthouse. Trying to make lemonade out of lemons, we decided to launch from the Fort and try a spot or two southwest of my typical haunts.
Water was very nice in the morning with enough cloud cover to make for a beautiful backdrop and blessedly mild temps.
Had no problem catching pins in the flats, though we should have run out about 30 minutes sooner as slack conditions at low tide really picked up once the tide turned and started ripping in. We made a choppy ride out averaging about 9 knots per hour. First spot we dropped we quickly caught a nice Spanish but then had to wait a while before the action really kicked in.
First big hit came off a stinger rig floating behind the boat. Trying to be the generous sort, I let Rhettley take the first fish. Well, as fate would have it about 3/4 of the way through his fight with the King we see two cobia accompanying it and within seconds of seeing them, two bottom-rig rods we have off the stern start singing. I quickly set the hook on one fish while Rhettley tried to seal the deal with the other while at the same time holding the rod that is still connecting him to his King. Rhettley's cobia came unbuttoned after just a second or two so we focused on putting what meat we could into the boat.
First in was Rhettley's King... hard to beat the beauty of the iridescent colors on the kings!
Thankfully we managed to get the cobia in as well. While not the longest cobe I've caught, was a really well-rounded (literally 
) fish. Actually had enough meat on it that it allowed me to fill fish orders from a dozen or so co-workers.
Truthfully, after we landed the fish things were kind of slow. Managed to catch and tag one short cobe (30' fork / 33" total length) and lost a few nice fish because of time between bites and being just a second or two slow on the draw. Though we found a few nice fish, we did NOT see much bait offshore nor did we see any surface feeding activity. Hopefully the activity level will only get better in the coming weeks ahead as things further warm up.
Was hoping the trip out would drop the cobia fever a degree or two, but actually had the opposite effect. Can't wait to get back out again!
). Well, this spring twice in a row, things just didn't work out. Though Bman somehow never seems to let business get in the way of duck hunting trips (
), he kept pulling the Lucy Van Pelt "Peanuts" football yanking trick (WE GOT TO GO!!! WAIT, NOW I CAN'T GO AS I GOT'S TO FATTEN THE BANK ACCOUNT!") leaving this poor Charlie Brown struggling to get his cobia game back on.So this past week after Bman yanked the football away for the second time I gave a short-notice holler to forum member Rhettley and being a fine fellow with his priorities in the right place he agreed to make a trip out with less than 24 hours notice.
With neither of us having been out in many moons, prep work found us getting out a bit late to launch in the skinny waters of my beloved Econfina, or for that matter even the lighthouse. Trying to make lemonade out of lemons, we decided to launch from the Fort and try a spot or two southwest of my typical haunts.
First big hit came off a stinger rig floating behind the boat. Trying to be the generous sort, I let Rhettley take the first fish. Well, as fate would have it about 3/4 of the way through his fight with the King we see two cobia accompanying it and within seconds of seeing them, two bottom-rig rods we have off the stern start singing. I quickly set the hook on one fish while Rhettley tried to seal the deal with the other while at the same time holding the rod that is still connecting him to his King. Rhettley's cobia came unbuttoned after just a second or two so we focused on putting what meat we could into the boat.
First in was Rhettley's King... hard to beat the beauty of the iridescent colors on the kings!
) fish. Actually had enough meat on it that it allowed me to fill fish orders from a dozen or so co-workers. Was hoping the trip out would drop the cobia fever a degree or two, but actually had the opposite effect. Can't wait to get back out again!
....12 wt made short work of him, never check to see if he was legal as we had no cooler 
If I'm right, good luck on the mission! 