At 5:00 am, there was just a tiny thunderstorm 20 miles southwest of Apalachicola. The latest official marine forecast called for light winds, calm seas, and a “chance” of rain and thunderstorms which would decrease during the day. The futurecast on weather.com, however, showed much of Apalachee Bay covered with thunderstorms by mid-morning.
With all the available information, I convinced my fishing buddies that we should head to Carrabelle in hopes the weather would be a nonissue. As we launched the boat, thunderstorms were popping up offshore from Carrabelle to Panama City. But the storms were moving southeast. Our plan was to ease out to find bait while staying north of the weather. We would head further offshore, weather permitting. If storms started popping up between us and land, we would race back to the ramp.
When we reached our bait spot in 40’, the storms were about even with O Tower, which is 17 miles south of East Pass. We took our time using Sabiki rigs to catch cigar minnows as the storms moved south and slowly dissipated. With enough bait, we headed south stopping about 2 miles north of the storms.
At our first spot, we caught two of our smaller red snapper. These snapper hit live cigar minnows that drifted down slowly on a 1 oz. knocker rig. We also quickly caught a few undersized red grouper, lost a hook to a shark, and lost most of a red snapper to a shark.
As I lowered my GoPro at spot 1, it recorded what was probably the very shark that had been harassing us.
The shark went after the camera, too, and bumped it. The shark was so close to the surface that part of the shark’s head was darkened by the shadow of the boat. Feel free to identify the shark species. If I say it’s a bull shark, four others on this forum will correct me.
Anyway, the bottom at spot 1 seemed to have lots of mangrove snapper, some lane snapper, decent-sized red snapper, and a few red grouper. The fish we caught hit live cigar minnows, frozen LYs, and slow pitch jigs, basically everything we put down. However, we wanted to go deeper to find some larger snapper and the path to the south was clear of weather for a few more miles.
Here is what the bottom looked like at spot 1.
Spot 2 was kind of an experimental spot because I found it with the sonar on the last trip, but we were unsuccessful in bringing any keepers into the boat. This time was different. A neighbor quickly brought a nice red snapper to the boat, and I caught a 29” gag grouper that we vented and released.
Not long after we released the gag, another one of my neighbors was really straining to reel in a fish. I was thinking that this guy needs to work out more. But when we saw the fish, I could tell that it was the fish getting the workout. It was an enormous 34” red snapper, perhaps a boat record. These big snapper fight like a sheet of plywood coming up sideways. The snapper was caught on a live cigar minnow.
Also at spot 2, a lone mahi-mahi made a quick pass under the boat and one of the guys just happened to be ready with a rod rigged with a 1 or 2 oz. pink Spro bucktail jig. As the mahi shot past the boat, the jig landed right on top of it. BAM! The mahi was hooked. After about six attempts to net the mahi, we finally got it into the boat. The fish was 31" to the fork.
Here’s a few pictures of the bottom at spot 2:
When the bite slowed at spot 2, we headed further south to some tried and true spots. Weather was no longer a concern as the satellite map showed the storms from the morning had moved far south and that no storms were to our north. We caught nothing worth writing about at our deepest spot. We were running out of time and we headed in the direction of home and planned to fish a spot halfway to East Pass.
The sonar showed fish about a quarter of a mile from our spot, so we stopped to fish. My neighbor dropped his bait to the bottom and his line peeled away from the reel as a fish ran with the hook straight away from the boat and then zig-zagged to the right and left over and over again. This was no bottom fish or shark. After a few minutes of battling the fish—flashes of silver from its sides. It was a kingfish that somehow didn’t bite through the 80 lb. fluorocarbon leader. The kingfish was 43” to its fork and was caught on half of a frozen LY.
Soon after the kingfish came aboard, I saw a cobia circling below the boat. I yelled, “There’s a cobia. Catch it!” My fishing buddy grabs his jigging rod which was rigged with a 200g jig that he was using for grouper and snapper. He drops the jig straight down about 20’ below the boat. Too late. The cobia had passed by already. But the fish sensing the jig, snapped its head around and crushed it. I rushed to the raise the trolling motor out of the water and out of the way of the cobia. My buddy, after fighting the fish for all of 2 minutes, yells for the gaff. Wisely, I say that he needs to tire it out more. After 3 more minutes, my fishing buddy says, “Its ready now.”
I successfully gaffed the fish near its gills, but it reacted like it was injected with adrenaline. The fish, now enraged, was convulsing and spitting blood everywhere. It was trying to slam its sharp spines from its first dorsal fin into the boat or into me. These spines look and feel like the angular nubs on medieval weapons and armor. It took two of us to hold and steady the gaff. At the same time, I was trying to bash the fish’s brains in with a tegaki, which is a spike attached to something like a hammer handle. After 5 minutes of repeatedly beating the fish on the head, I think I successfully punctured its skull and killed it. Whew! A new boat rule—don’t bring a keeper cobia on the boat unless you have fought it for at least 20 minutes.
The cobia was 42” to the fork and weighed about 30 lbs. Look at what the cobia did to the jig.
Here’s what the bottom looked like at our last spot.
Here’s the fish pile at the end of the day.
