Lost a rod and reel today
Posted: May 14th, 2017, 9:22 pm
If anyone sees a rod and reel being towed by a big bluefish its mine. My wife and I were fishing today, well I fished and she stretched out and listened to the radio. I was working the edge of this huge sandy trough that was holding a bunch of fish, pretty much all the fish you catch this time of year on the flats and I'm hooking up pretty much every cast. I'm fishing with my jig setup, which is pretty lightweight because I like the keep it interesting. So now I hook up with the aforementioned bluefish, he is cutting up pretty good and ripping drag so I'm in no hurry just enjoying the fight. I get him to the boat and he is still pretty full of piss and vinegar, that's when I noticed the two cobia following him. This is the point it went to full on Chinese fire drill. One of the cobia is border line keeper probably a few inches shy if I had to call it and the other is a nice fish probably 30ish #s. Now I still have this surly blue on in my left hand and somehow have gotten my big rod out of the rod holder and hooked my last pinfish with my right. Not sure how I did it but feels like the whole process took about two and one half seconds. By now my wife has gotten off her perch and walked over to see what all the commotion is about. I tell her to take the rod with the blue on that I'm assuming is whipped by this point and hand it off behind me as I pitch the pin to the two pretty worked up cobia off the stern of my boat. I let the rod go with my left hand only to see it go flying right back past me and pulled quickly under by one of the more resilient bluefish in the gulf. There was some debate later over the integrity of the exchange, her saying it was not a clean exchange and me insisting that I would not have let the rod go unless she had it and she had just not anticipated the tug on the line. It was probably a little of both, but no time to cry over spilled milk because one of the cobia inhaled my pinfish as I'm watching my rod and reel disappear. I set the hook and its the smaller of the two, of course, but the big one is still right there. So not learning from my mistakes I proceed to hand off the smaller cobia off to my wife, successfully this time, as I go rig another rod for the bigger of the two. Bad news I'm out of live pinfish, but I have a ladyfish in the cooler for cut so I lop the tail off run a hook through it while my poor wife has a green cobia on right at the boat. It didn't last too long though because the line popped, she possibly grabbed the spool or I had the drag set too tight(not likely), also some later debate about that(btw if you see a cobia pulling around a yellow pooping cork its mine too). All good though because now everything was clear for me to stick the big one, except he didn't want to eat. He just cruised under my boat and turned his nose up at cut lady and any kind of artificial I threw at him. I mean I cleaned the cobwebs out of the bottom of my tackle bag. So after 20 or so minutes of harassing this fish while drifting over this vast sandy area, I looked around my boat littered with rods and line, depressed I fired the motor with the fish still under the boat and eased on to finish the day with one less rod and no cobia.