Cobia fishing report

 

I’ve been paid hundreds of thousands of dollars over my career to take people out under miserable conditions which I would not choose to go out into myself, but I’ve never paid so much money to go out in that misery!  I can think of a couple of those trips you financed!.

Still had a great time.  

Friday it started raining and never stopped.  I was in full body condom and the rain gear outlasted my 3 cigarette lighters but at the end I was soaking wet from head to toe, but not so wet that it poured out of my boots.  It rained sideways for much of the day with the 30 knot winds.   When the wind would lay down it was just because the rain drops were so big and so furious that the wind could not blow.   At those times I believe that it was actually raining upside down.  

Late in the day, between one of the squalls associated with the storm that had all the ingredients except a name, I hooked a fish on bait, it shook his head, came to the top and everyone said shark, they saw a fin……I did too, but it could have been the tail of a BIG cobia.   If it was a cobia, tournament winner for sure.   Everything just went slack and I was sure that the shark had cut the line, but the hook came back without a scratch on the leader.   They still say shark, I say we lost the tournament winning cobia.  We’ll never know.

 It rained most of Saturday morning, cleared up for a couple of hours and we saw the winning fish caught beside us,  a 50 pounder.

 Sunday sucked.  Rough, rain, windy, clouds, but it would have been actually very pleasant compared to Friday if our guide had not picked the absolute roughest part of the Atlantic Ocean to spend the day.

 No fish were caught on Friday.  Only 4 boats were loco enough to participate so they drew names out of the hat to distribute those prizes.   1^st, 2^nd, 3^rd place for big fish and the same places for big stringer.   We had 6 chances.   Our name was never drawn from the hat. 

 Patrick Caton, Rick’s son, went with us on Friday.  After the day he begged me not to tell his daddy that he went fishing with us.  When asked why, Patrick is a grown man and can do what he wants, his reply was.   “My daddy would just look at me and shake his head and say that he thought that he had grown me to know better.”.

I really did have a blast and most of the top fish were caught near us, so we were in the zone.   Whether we had our chance or a big shark, I'll never know.   Many thanks to Breakwater Inn, Oden's Dock and Cameron Whittaker's expertise for keeping us safe and keeping us fishing under extreme conditions. 

Meanwhile at Cape Lookout, consistent cobia catches, despite tough conditions, indicate that there are a lot of fish still on the way up the coast.   

If you ever make it to Cape Hatteras, give us a ring and we'll get you connected with a true waterman.