What a day! I took a friend of mine, George Galloway (who loves to freshwater bass fish) out to the Lanark flats yesterday.
Been a long time since he has saltwater fished. Dale Hollow and Banshee was also with us in his boat, Hard Times IV.
We got a few 'hundred' live shrimp at Mike's and headed out to the flats around 8:00 am. Tide was right at low tide and rising on the way out. Water was perfect, light ripples. We went out to one of our favorite 'holes' and started pitching live shrimp under CT's. We caught a few nice 18 inch trout in about 1/2 hour. I picked up a nice Spannie (25 inches) in 3 ft. of water. 
As the bite started picking up around 10:30, I had caught a few small 2 inch pinfish on some squid. We started using live pins, and we caught a couple of nice 'gator' trout on them. Then George says to me, "Look at the fish over there!" I said, "Where?"
You could see a "bulge" on the top of the water (something like the submarine in "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea") coming right for the boat. I told him to pitch his live pinfish over there, and he did just that.
Well - This monster fish proceeded to inhale that pinfish, and his CT disappeared! After what seemed like an eternity, George finally set the hook. The fish jumped and rolled, and I hollered it was the biggest cobia I had ever seen! I reeled in all the rods, pulled in the anchor, started the motor - and off we went chasing this huge fish.
He was using 15 pound test line with a steel leader. George looked at his watch when he set the hook too. We proceeded to chase this darn fish all over the bay it seemed, and I was wondering how I was ever going to land that huge fish with my small dipnet, and NO GAF HOOK!
Dale Hollow was about 1/2 mile down the reef and saw all the comotion and came over to check us out. I was waving at him frantically to come to my boat. He had a brand new gaf hook. Dale Hollow threw the gaf over to me, and after a 50 minute fight we finally got the fish landed. I had to use Dale Hollow's boat, as my small bass boat has such a small livewell, and his was 4 ft. long. After George recuperated,
we proceeded to catch a few more keeper trout on shrimp and CT's, and around 2:00 pm we decided to head in. A couple in a new boat was stranded so we helped tow them in and called it a day. (Wow!) 
Total for the Day: About 10 keeper trout, 1 Nice Spannie, and 1 MONSTER Cobia! Way to go - George!!!
Special Thanks go out to Dale Hollow for helping us land the fish, and use his gaf hook. I'll never forget the day we had our first "Cobia Rodeo"!!
Skeeter
(George with his big cobia) - 40 inches long, 30 pounds, 23 inch girth.
