Having only hunted cobia & rays off the beach once last year (immediately after moving) I still didn’t know what to expect as Casey & I last year never saw a ray or cobia on the beach. Well having now learned how, for those who have never done it before, it’s a no brainer when you find the rays-you’ll know exactly what needs to be done after your first ray (hopefully with cobia on it too). Fishing for cobia off the rays on the beach is about as simple as it gets. You just have to use good judgment when see a ray and there are a number of boats around like there were on Friday. Be courteous and find your own ray is what I would suggest.
Mark at the net (what a lake)
After throwing the net once (there is an insane amount of pogies out there) and securing live pogies we let Casey play for quite a while with the bluefish that were thick on each of the pogie pods. After that we headed south and ran the beach looking for rays & cobia. What we found was only pogie pods and I probably spent too much time working some structure/wreck right off the beach (well south of the St Augy pier). We had a couple of strikes on the structure and on this structure we saw a kingfish rocket, a tarpon roll within 30 yards, and a turtle that kept popping up. It looked fishy and I was hanging onto my “gulf coast mentality” of cobia fishing on structure. Without catching anything we started back south and within 15 minutes started seeing rays. On the first ray Mark hooks up with a cobia but it’s a short.
Casey at the net
Casey with Mark’s short cobia
While they were measuring it (it was 25” TL) I’m getting the tagging kit out and we then tagged and released it.
Mark about to release his first cobia (also tagged)
We found a few more rays with nothing on them and a couple that did have cobia but the rays sounded-as did the cobia and we only had a single shot at these. We then spotted another one with a single cobia on it and throwing a jig tipped with a pogie Mark hooked up but thought he might have hooked the ray since it was staying deep and wouldn’t budge. After a few minutes he brought it up to the surface and I ran to get the gaff. It’s a solid cobia and it’s heading for the fishbox.
Mark on the bow
Mark with his first cobia; 24 lbs even.
Once gaffed it immediately went onto the fishbox and we enjoyed some high fives and a couple of photos. After that we looked for more rays but it seemed that there were a lot more boats than rays and it was beginning to get competitive (I can only imagine a weekend….). Not wanting to deal with that we headed north for another pogie pod and let Casey play with the bluefish, keeping a dozen for the smoker. It was a great day on the water and a good experience learning how to sight fish cobia off the rays. Very cool!
Hoo Yah!!
Brian
