Bass & Cobes
Posted: July 21st, 2015, 12:44 pm
Throwing this report in the inshore section by averaging out the locations we fished. Joking aside didn't have to go out far to catch the cobes and did scallop right after fishing midshore depths. 
Had one of my college frat bros come down from Atlanta along with his son who starts college this fall. In the past they've hopped over to fish while vacationing on St. George Island but this go round came straight down just to fish a few days. With the solunar forecast waning a bit and with them having no other vacation plans to help make memories, I was feeling the pressure to put them on a few good fish.
They arrived mid-afternoon on Thursday the 16th and with it too late to make a run to the coast I took them bass fishing. They said they had never topwater fished for bass in lily pads and that their largest catches had been around 3 pounds, so I told them I thought I might be able to show them a very different style of fishing than they were used to doing. Bite wasn't on fire but we finished the afternoon with half a dozen explosive blow-ups, landing 4 of them with 3 of the 4 exceeding their past biggest bass.
Master Painter gifted us with a gorgeous sunset as we called it a day.
Next morning we went out of St. Marks to do a bit of fishing and scalloping. Loaded up with bait in the flats around the lighthouse then ran south to check a few different spots. As we boated out we ran into multiple feeding frenzies. Caught lots of jacks as well as a few bluefish. Didn't land any mackerel but suffered a few cut-offs and got to see one lone king mack slice across the top of one of the bait schools.
Outside of the feeding frenzies we didn't have incredible action at our spots, but did manage to tag one short cobe pretty quickly and then right before running to the scallop grounds landed a single keeper.
With cobia for dinner the guys said they wanted to dive in and find a few scallops but not keep any. Didn't take long for them to find a few handfuls each, with all returned to be captured another day.
Finish the report by sharing that I got a text from my buddy last night that made me hungry the second I saw it. 
Had one of my college frat bros come down from Atlanta along with his son who starts college this fall. In the past they've hopped over to fish while vacationing on St. George Island but this go round came straight down just to fish a few days. With the solunar forecast waning a bit and with them having no other vacation plans to help make memories, I was feeling the pressure to put them on a few good fish.
They arrived mid-afternoon on Thursday the 16th and with it too late to make a run to the coast I took them bass fishing. They said they had never topwater fished for bass in lily pads and that their largest catches had been around 3 pounds, so I told them I thought I might be able to show them a very different style of fishing than they were used to doing. Bite wasn't on fire but we finished the afternoon with half a dozen explosive blow-ups, landing 4 of them with 3 of the 4 exceeding their past biggest bass.
Just waited a bit too long into the trip to start and after too little sleep and fishing in the sweltering heat we weren't too eager to face cleaning them versus simply filleting out the cobia. That said, they tried scalloping with me a year ago out of Econfina where we didn't find a single one despite looking for a long time, so they wanted to see what it was like when numbers were better while also getting the chance to start cooling off from the fishing.
