BigBendFishing.Net

So with doom & gloom reports of death & mayhem out of my beloved Econfina I thought it was about time to swing over St. Marks way to steal a cobe or two from other fertile grounds.

Met up with Sharkman Sunday mid-morning to beautiful conditions. Didn't get out on the water until around 8:30, the late start coming back to bite us a bit mid-day. Nonetheless, at least in the morning the skies were relatively cloud free.
Had this little dude (or dudette) follow us from the ramp about halfway down the lighthouse channel...
Anyway, we ran out to 8' waters to catch bait... NADA. Ran a bit deeper to 10'... NADA. 12'... NADA... 15'... NADA. First time we've been skunked fishing for bait in MANY a moon, and it really had us worried about the day. Run on out to a spot in 20' we want to test out, and MUCH TO OUR RELIEF we find a bit of bait and fish, but... WE can't catch bait for the fish we're hooking... ladyfish. Ladyfish, after ladyfish, after ladyfish, after ladyfish...well, you get the picture. Ladyfish on gulp jigs, ladyfish on sabiki (for as long as the hooks stay on), ladyfish on anything/everything we dropped. Bman would have loved the ones we were hooking, as many of them were big... say around 3 or 4 pounds.

First time we've gotten into ladyfish quite so thick in deeper waters. Did manage to snag one small grouper amongst the ladyfish bedlam.
Ladyfish schools kept coming and going, but between ladyfish bites we finally got enough live bait to sink a few and after a fairly long wait... FISH ON!
Was so happy to take pics of Sharkman's fight / capture some cool footage of it even making a few jumps (may try to post when have more time), that I got caught slow footed when two MUCH bigger cobes followed up Sharkman's hooked fish. One looked to be about 10 pounds heavier, and the other about 20 pounds heavier! Did make a drop or two after they showed up but to no avail. Netted the cobe and as it was 2" to the safe side, kept it to help feed some company coming in to town later this week.
Also caught one nice keeper flounder before clouds built enough to run us inshore, making us wish we had gotten an earlier start!
WARNING: FEW ADDITIONAL PHOTOS NOT FOR THE SQUEAMISH!

Ok, so when cleaning the cobia I checked the stomach as I always do to see what they've been feeding on... the first share brings back memories of Bman's first keeper cobia aboard Marine's Dream!
Now for the likely grossest picture of all... pretty sure that the cobia had not one, but two lizardfish in it's belly. That shared picture of just one will suffice. Trust me!
First time I've found shells in a fishes belly, and found not just 1 but 4! Just a bit bigger than peas so not huge... guessing accidental ingestion sucking up other prey?
Finally, end with a photo of sea lice that were attached to the cobia's tail. Think these weird little boogers must have been used to help design the creatures in the Alien films. Know I wouldn't want them attached to me!

Can see in the shell picture evidence of some particular parasitic worm that was helping the cobia's stomach in the digestion process. Quite a few of them present... not the worms typically found in the flesh of fish, such as trout... absolutely in the stomatch. Any BBF member know the exact species? Always curious to learn what I can.

Good post bbg. I always do a "gut check" also when cleaning fish. I wonder if the worms were parasitic or lunch. If they weren't attached to the stomach mucosa( inner lining of the stomach), then they probably aren't parasitic. Ive found some strange worms in redfish stomachs. Now, those aliens on the tail are certainly parasitic. We pull those off redfish from time to time. Maybe mule train will have or can find the answer. Cool seahorse, I've never found one of those is a fish stomach.

We have to figure out how to melt gulp down and make a GULP Sea Horse!

Thanks for the encouraging report BBG...

Salty Gator wrote:I wonder if the worms were parasitic or lunch. If they weren't attached to the stomach mucosa( inner lining of the stomach), then they probably aren't parasitic. Ive found some strange worms in redfish stomachs. Now, those aliens on the tail are certainly parasitic. We pull those off redfish from time to time. Maybe mule train will have or can find the answer. Cool seahorse, I've never found one of those is a fish stomach.

Salty Gator, pretty sure these worms were parasitic. Stomach was fairly full of food, so no shortage of pretty strong digestive juices present and these worms weren't dead but instead in hyper drive mode, wiggling like they were on crack. Kept dancing up a storm even on the cleaning table after the cobia was filleted.

Bit of reading from a few scientific pdf articles on line point to a few stomach specific Gulf of Mexico suspects in cobia such as "Goezia pelagia" and / or "Neogeozia elacateidae", as well as "Contracaecum inguies." Sure can't swear it though!

And have to add thought for sure Bman's original wholly consumed seahorse was also an accidental fluke ingestion occurrence, but now having found a second, thinking maybe not. The perfect condition of Bman's still amazes me... made it past the cobe crusher pads without getting slammed / ground down, that's for sure!

Interesting BBG, I'm not sure about fish, but there a couple of species that can live in the stomachs of horses. I can't think of one that doesn't attach to the stomachs inner lining to borrow nutrients.Bot fly larva comes to mind(gross). It may be different in fish. Hopefully MTG will find it for us. Very interesting stuff

Thanks for the bio lesions and fishing report! Sure glad to see you make a liar out of sharkman!

Thanks for the trip! Another good one! The bobcat sighting was cool too.

I am working on tying a sea horse flie

By the way, sea horse is a killer bait for black fin tuna out of Miami. Bouncer Smith (famous guide) uses them. He discovered the idea the same way you did, BBG, from belly contents. Just need to figure out how to get them?