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Date: Once In A Lifetime
Title: July 24, 2004
Date: 27 Jul 2004
Time: 08:05:05 -0400
“Once in a life time” If I had a dollar for every hour I spent preparing to go, driving to get to the Gulf with my hopes high, boat riding with vision of things to come, collecting prime baits, time spent drifting and casting or at anchor watching for any brown shadow around this channel marker then the next channel marker only to move to that rock pile to try and see the brown shadow, then moving up and down a slough to trick a brown shadow into taking the bait, I’d have so much money I’d have to weigh it rather than count it. I’m talking about the pursuit of big cobia. Once you get hooked up your hooked up for life. It is saltwater cocaine. Seeing a huge brown log (girl cobia) milling around a channel marker or offshore structure, with her entourage of smaller male suitors swimming around her, can make me shake like Sunday morning coming down. It takes effort to keep calm enough to pitch a live bait, plastic eel, jig or whatever close to the ‘Bahama mama’ to draw her interest. More often than not she only expresses causal interest. Swimming to the bait at every offering only to turn away just when you think... But when she takes the bait, it makes all the hours of effort worthwhile. Your world gets small, quick. You and her connected by a thin line. Mentally you’re one with the fish, to the point all other thought processes close down. Purity of thought. Maybe it is the tunnel vision effect that makes cobia fishing similar to drug addiction. Yet, unlike drugs, it is hard to sell this experience because you may only get a single hit a day. The difference between cobia fishing and drug addition is that you can go cobia fishing for a life time but drugs kill you. The point is cobia are my favorite fish, my addiction. I’ve had ‘cobia phobia’ for a long time. The biggest one I’ve ever brought in was less than 40 pounds; however. I wrote all that to tell you this...this Saturday, 40 plus miles off Steinhatchee, a big girl milled around my boat for a minute. Little B slung dead bait around the boat in hopes that the chum would keep her hanging around long enough to put out a fresh pinfish. Yet she swam down and away with my heart. Several minutes later, Shelly, one of the ladies fishing with us, lowered down a black pinfish in hopes of battling with a reef donkey, aka amberjack. Her bait was stopped on the way down. Shelly flipped the reel in gear which forced the rod to bend over double. I thought, crap, I’m still locked into cobia mode and Shelly’s making me stop to deal with a reef donkey. I grabbed the gaff because Little B was on top of the T-top trying to spot the cobia. I had managed to set out a free lined pinfish before Shelly hooked up. Well, I could tell the fish was of size by the way the pole was bending yet Shelly was steady reeling. Just reeling not jerking and winding The drag wasn’t chirping off. Weird, but I was happy the battle wasn’t going to be long lived because I wanted to try for that cobia. Shelly was fishing in corner of the port stern, close to the motor. Important information. The lack of battle lasted about three minutes. The fish came up, rather willingly from underneath the port outboard. COBIA!!!! I yelled. Little B sprang down off the T-top. The cobia, yes the big girl we saw earlier, was letting Shelly lead it to the boat like a dog on a leash. The fish swam tranquil by the outboard as if wandering what was going on. If the fish had a look it was ‘Why am I here?’ Not fighting just hanging. Decision making time for me. Do I gaff the green fish or let a fight break out? I stuck her. She went wild. The gaff rotated in my hands. Shelly was up close and personal with the entire event being pinned on the rear seat. I heaved the fish up but the more fish that came out of the water the more difficult it became. It beat the side of the boat. It beat the gunnel. And once it hit the deck it beat the boat. The handle of the gaff was being thrashed about wildly. Shelly was trying to clear out as Little B was sliding the 120qt bait cooler at me and the fish. A squeeze play. The fish flopped, smacking Shelly on the thigh. I dodged the cooler as it pinned the fish against the stern seat. In the same motion Little B and I grabbed Shelly by the arm and strap of the fighting belt to help get her out of the way. I plopped down on the cooler to keep it against the fish. The fish was strong enough to move the cooler with me sitting on it. Hugs and high fives broke out. Everybody on the boat relived the event, telling stories for fifteen minutes while the cobia settled down. Camera time. I slide the cooler away from the fish to see a huge fish. Shelly stood beside me as I lifted the fish. How much do you think it weighs? Forty pounds? Fifty pounds? More? “It’s more than forty, we’ll find out at the dock” I said. Shelly asked “How did I get this bruise on my thigh?” The lady was fish slapped. While enroute I radioed in to Gulf Stream Marina to have them call my wife to let her know my ETA and to bring the bathroom scale. A crowd developed when Little B pulled the fish off the boat and hung it on the board. He framed the big girl with our grouper, dolphin and snapper we had in the fish box. The moment of truth. Little B weighed himself, then weighed himself holding the fish. Sixty eight pounds! A goody for this area. Shelly pulled off in three minutes what I have been trying to do for years. I was so happy for her but, at the same time, jealous. One day my dream girl will come. I’ve noticed that women are better cobia fishers than men. Why? I came to this conclusion. Most ladies don’t have the upper body strength to horse or muscle the fish. They are far more gentle, less jerking, less power, less things that aggravate the fish into a dimension of pissed off. The girl style works. They don’t break off fish. They rely on the drag to wear the fish down. They listen to instruction better. They’re not trying to ‘wham bam thank you mam’ the fish into the boat. The less aggressive approach works. Try it. Kick that drag back and lead that big cobia to the boat in ‘girl style’. Bringing a cobia to the boat is very different than power reeling a grouper off the bottom. It is tough to convince a man that easier and longer is better than hard and fast. I suppose that translates into other aspects of life but I’m not going there. The point is this, different fish require different fighting styles. One style doesn’t fit all situations. I’ve hammered on a 30 pound cobia for thirty minutes yet Shelly reeled in a 68 pound cobia in three minutes. I took note. It’s hot and grouper fishing is hot. Grouper are taking live and frozen baits in 40-55 feet of water on hard bottom. For those long runners, the grouper are very good in 70-90 feet. Red grouper are the primary catch which brings up the new rule. You can only have two red grouper per person. The grouper limit is still five per person but only two of which can be red. If you have four people on your boat, you can come in with eight red grouper; the rest of the aggregate limit must be gag or scamp grouper. Friday we tossed back fourteen keeper red grouper. It’s hard to throw back a ten pound red but just think of it as planting seed. The seas have been so calm that I’ve found drifting to the be the best tactic to pick up grouper and locate new ‘honey holes’. Why deal with the anchor if you don’t have to? Furthermore, I noticed that the bite is better drifting as if pulling the bait away from the grouper forces the bite itself. Just an observation. Tiger Woods has his caddy carry more than one club in his bag and I believe in having more than one technic to catch a fish. Scallops seem to be plentiful for those willing to search the flats. The whine of the shop vacuums at the cleaning tables indicate the success of the bivalve bobbers'. I’d love to see an aerial photo showing the number of boats invading our grass flats on any given Saturday these next two months. It’s got to be tough on the trout fishermen trying for a trophy speck in skinny water. You better ‘getter done’ by nine in the morning on the weekends or your next cast will land in a boat. Take care and thanks for reading. Capt B