A Tale of Two Cobia

[big bend gyrene]

Subject header sums it up perfectly... weekend trip out resulted in a tale of two cobia (and only two cobia).

Was a day where I felt like both the windshield and the bug. Reason I say that is it took just TWO casts to catch TWO cobia, with the first in just 3.5' of water... but after that... SLOW, SLOW, SLOW.

So here's the story on the first cobe... launched out of Ecky with fellow board member Ontiltttttt and one of his buds at sunrise and immediately started working to load the live well with pins. About 7:30am we had a mullet jump within casting distance of the boat so for kicks and giggles I grabbed a rod with a gold Badonk-A-Donk tied on and cast as quickly as I could to the spot of the jump. INSTANTLY met with a topwater slam and the light reel on the inshore rod starts screaming. My suspicion was that we'd hooked a really nice red but, no, instead a nice, albeit 2" short, inshore cobe! Tagged it and released it.

Once the livewell was filled we ran out to deeper waters and on the first drop I slowly hand-released line and about the time the bait should have been hitting the bottom it instead kept moving further and further back in the direction of the tidal flow... to the point I thought I should give it a tug... AND... FISH ON! Hand the rod off to Ontilttttt's bud and he did a good job quickly boating the cobe, again just a few inches short and thus tagged and released.

So with only TWO casts made and TWO cobes boated I'm thinking, "WE'RE IN FOR A HOT DAY!" Well, I was right in a way... temps got so brutally hot we could barely stand it, and when the tide finally went slack in the afternoon we threw in the towel. Did sporadically hook just enough short grouper along with a file-fish to keep us from giving up and quitting any earlier.

As I sit watching rains pour from Tropical Storm Colin, I appreciate we were blessed with a pretty nice day even if the bite didn't prove to be all that steady, and Ontiltttttt's 3 year "lucky charm" run of ALL his trips aboard Marine's Dream resulting in at least a single cobe caught remains intact .

[big bend gyrene]

As a follow-up to my previous report, visibility was great (trip made just before TS Colin came through) and not only did we catch pins everywhere we drifted the grass appeared to be quite healthy the areas we drifted.

Pray we get just enough rain in the coming weeks to keep grass green and crops alive BUT not so much that the water stains to the point of impacting grass growth and killing off any scallops (thankfully spotted a healthy number of those too).