PELAGIC PIRATE: PANAMA CITY BEACH COBIA REPORT

[TITLEWAVE]

“From Zeros to Hero’s”



Day 1 (4/28): saw the weather looking good during the week so played hooky to get down to PC with my buddy Sipple. Got out on the water early Wednesday morning and ran into mechanical issues. Luckily, it happened just outside the PC pass and we were not too far from home.



Unfortunately, we just had our new tower installed last month and one of the control cables snapped in the tower. Set anchor and waited for Sea Tow to come get us while we worked on diagnosing the problem. After about an hour at the dock we got the boat working again with now forward/neutral/reverse from the tower, but we had throttles and steering. Big thanks to my boat partner Mike for working the phones while we were in distress. The ship’s engineer, this time over the phone!



Back on the water and fishing by 10:30, we ran over a fish early cruising at high speed so decided to start fishing. 1 for 2 by 1:00 and then didn’t see another fish until 5:00 – a double. Barely got the eel out in time in dirty water and hooked the bigger fish. Despite a terrible start to the day and limited controls, limited out and went 3 for 6 – 28 and 35 pounders in the box. Not big fish, but what a recovery!



Came back in to watch the Treasure Ship smoking as we pulled up to the dock. What a sight to see.



Day 2 (4/29): got out early again and my buddy Sipple bet me $20 we would limit out before noon. Hopeful, I would loose this bet! We spotted our first fish around 10am and got a 45 pounder in the box. Then, just before noon we caught another 40 and decide to stick her with the gaff and put it in the box.



Limited before noon and then the fish really start popping. As we start heading east we spot another, turn and Sipple makes his first cast to a Cobia – perfect cast right in front of the fish. He’s on with the first cobia he’s ever hooked! We boat the fish and release and estimated 35 pounder.



We are not in the tower 10 minutes and spot another fish – Sipple makes another cast and hooks up. Bam, just like that he goes from never hooking a Cobia to catching two fish back to back. The push of fish continues and we end up reaching 7 fish before you know it, and passing up a lot of small cobia.



We start heading home at a pretty good clip and I look off the bow and see a slob. Throttle back and we make a sharp turn, throw the jig way out in front of the fish and we are on. Faught the fish for a good 35 minutes, bring her up and of course regret that we are limited out, but no complaints on a day like this.



We get the fish up next to the boat and I get the boga grip on her lip. At first I was just trying to get my jig back, but after she thrashes for a while she falls off and just sits there in the water. So I hand line her back in and put her back on the boga. To see what she weighs, I lift her out of the water and the boga is pegged where 60# would be. The fish is tired out, so Sipple and I lift the fish into the boat to get a better weight with the better scale. She turns back and forth slowly for a little while and then comes to rest. The fish bounces between high 60’s and low 70’s while we held her .We then put her back in the water, and revived/released her back to the ocean.



Tough to let a fish like that go, but in the end we felt good about it. We had tons of Cobia in the box already and she swam off with lots of eggs in her belly.



Finished the day at 8 for 15 and we passed up a lot of little fish. Best cobia fishing I have ever seen!

[Agitated88]

Dude...you are on FIRE!!! Another excellent post/pictures!

[Bogart]

Fucker.

[TITLEWAVE]

Fucker.

Headed out tomorrow to fish 3 days , before the oil slick makes its way to my area.

Total disaster of biblical proportions.


Keep posted for some hard core fishing shots over the next 3 days.......