Hi Everyone,
I had some friends in town and we were lucky enough to get out on Friday and Saturday. Beautiful days!
On Friday, we didn't do so good. We stopped by Jerry's and he said that he didn't have any live shrimp so we headed out with lures. Went E to the rocks and didn't have any trout lovin, so decided to head out to the Bird Rack to see if anything was up a little further out. On the way there, saw dozens of gulls picking at the water. Well, I know what that means, so we headed towards them and saw tons of Spanish jumping out of the water. (At this point I really regretted we didn't buy the frozen shrimp.) We threw everything we had at them and although they were biting like crazy (even on topwater) we couldn't get any of them to stick. After three hours of messing with them, and throwing everything in the box at them, we decided to head in for some trout or reds on the bars. That didn't happen and we went home skunked.
But Saturday made it all worth while. We headed right back out to where the macks had been the previous day and they were no where to be seen, but the trout were a bit more lively and I caught a nice 18 incher on my first cast (the guys from up north were impressed). Then we headed back towards the rocks and started catching trout and the stray ladyfish pretty regularly. Then it happened...
I watch my buddy's CT go zipping alongside the boat with a nice size trout on it when I see this massive - at least 4 ft long - black shadow right on it's tail. Then his line (8 lb test with a CT and mono over the shrimp) heads for the lighthouse and goes out at least a hundred yards before it stops. Huge cobia. He fought it for 40 minutes and we spent a lot of time trying to figure out how we would get it in the boat. But it was all to no avail, he finally bit off about 5 feet from us. We had a nice crowd watching us and felt like asses. But it sure was fun. I saw about 7 cobia on Saturday morning, all within about 4 ft of water. I have never seen that many.
We are hoping to head out again on Wednesday. This time I will make an effort to get some baitfish and have a larger rig setup ready to meet Mr. Cobia.
Hope all is well with everyone. It's summer on the flats!
-Bill
St. Marks 4/14 and 4/15
Moderators: bman, Chalk, Tom Keels
Very nice report Doc 
I'll bet your vistors will have quite a time telling the story about the Cobia 
I notice a lot of activity on Friday morning at the SM river entrance also. Birds, etc. We stopped for a few minutes and threw some top water but never raised anything.
I'll bet your vistors will have quite a time telling the story about the Cobia I notice a lot of activity on Friday morning at the SM river entrance also. Birds, etc. We stopped for a few minutes and threw some top water but never raised anything."Good Judgement" comes from experience, ... and a lot of that..... results from "Bad Judgement".
