I feel the same way. However this story was so good because it sounded like something my fishing buddies would share during a night time BS session at Hatteras in the fall. Of course great story telling is an art, I think the writer did an excellent job.
What hoot Seafrog ! Thanks !!! Maybe there should be a running thread on fishtales ????
I love to hear about the mis-adventures of others as it makes me feel a little better about my own. Thank goodness I don't have any stories to equal that one nor the one a friend relates concerning an encounter with a cobia ----- ya'll enjoy Lost Sailor's tale ----- it is true !!! BTW, Matt is no small guy - 6', 300#, solid ----
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Okay, I have been asked many times to relive an experience I had once with a Cobia onboard my vessel. I must say that I really do not like to relive this story as I came out on the loosing end of a bad situation, so I will put into print one last time in hopes I won’t have to tell it again. This is a true story that occurred during the early part of the summer of 2002.
I was fishing by myself this particular morning and was anxious to get offshore. Of course nothing ever goes quite as planed. When I tried to crank the engine I didn’t get any response from the starter. So I pulled out the tool box and broke out the hammer to tap on the starter. That did the trick and it wasn’t long before I was on my way.
It was a beautiful morning as I was heading offshore; the seas were calm with light airs. I was making good time, doing about 40 knots and it didn’t take me too long before I got to my fishing hole. I had a packet of cigar minnows sitting out thawing while I drove the boat. Normally when I have a passenger one of us will rig baits and the other will drive, but on this morning the rigging was going to have to wait until I got on station.
I was about 30 miles out when I pulled the engine back and approached one of my fishing holes. I was in about 65 foot of clear blue water; over top of some hard bottom and rocks. When I got to my destination I maneuvered the boat upstream of my hole and then killed the engine so I would do a slow drift back over the hole.
I broke out the fishing rods and hooked up a large rig for the bottom and put a whole cigar minnow on it. I dropped the line down to the bottom, set the drag and placed it in the rod holder and then proceeded to start rigging my lines I was going to drift for some kings. I had rigged two rods with cigar minnows when the reel started to scream that glorious sound only a Penn reel will make. I stop what I am doing and go to the pole. I let the fish run for a bit longer and then I took the pole from the holder, engaged the drag and set the hook. The fight was on at this point and it took me about 15 minutes to get a small black tip shark up to the boat. The shark was about 3 feet long, and not to happy to be at the end of my pole. He was thrashing about on the surface really kicking up a raucous. I let him sit there with its head just out of the water as I rested a minute and caught my breath. It was at this point I realized I was not alone, as the largest dern Cobia I have ever seen came out from underneath my boat and started to taunt that poor ole shark.
I placed the rod in the holder and grabbed on of the two rods I had just finished rigging with cigar minnows and chunked the bait in front of the cobia. It immediately inhaled the bait, I leaned back to set the hook and for about 2 seconds I met resistance, and then there was nothing. I muttered to myself thinking he had broken the line, but when I retrieved it I realized I still had my rig, it was just that all three of the treble hooks had been flattened. I was cursing to myself thinking I had spooked the fish off when I realized that shark was going completely ballistic. I looked underneath the shark and there was that darn cobia taunting it again.
I grabbed the second rod I had previously rigged up and chunked out the bait. After about 2 throws I had the fish’s attention and again he inhaled the bait. Again though, I had about 2 to 3 seconds of resistance and then nothing again. I reel in my line to see that all of the treble hooks were again flattened. I really started up a stream of curse this time as I was sure the fish was gone.
I go into my tackle box and pull out my third and final king rig. I hook it onto my line and bait it up in case I happen to see the fish again. No sooner had I finished rigging the line I look out and there was that cobia, completely unfazed by my attempts to hook it. I start chunking the bait and it wasn’t too long before he inhaled it again. This time I free spooled the line for about 30 seconds before engaging the drag and setting the hook. This time I was sure I had that fish hooked up good. I leaned back set the hook good and for about 1 minute I was hooked into the fish and then again nothing but slack. This time when I pulled my line in though instead of the hooks being crushed, they had all been straightened out. Now I was really upset and totally convinced I had spooked off the fish.
I start going through my tackle box looking for another rig and for any hooks that were bigger than what I had been using. There were none, I was all out of large tackle. The only rig I had left was in the sharks mouth. I was muttering under my breath about the circumstances I was in and as I went to get the shark of the line I realized that there underneath the boat darting in and out taunting that shark was that same ole cobia. This really had me flabbergasted and speechless. I didn’t know what to do at this point though because the only hook I had big enough was still in the mouth of a very upset shark.
It was about this time me eyes focused on the largest hook I had in my boat, my gaff. I told myself that it was stupid to even think of trying to gaff a free swimming fish, let alone one as big as this one. As most people do at times of desperation though, sometimes they let their stupid side influence them too much. This is what happened with me. I started to form a plan in my head, all I had to do was gaff the fish and then whack it on the head with my hammer and bring it into the boat and put it in the ice box. That can not be too difficult of a task, right?
So I get my hammer out and place it on my motor cover. I get my gaff ready and I keep telling myself “Don’t do this, you are asking for trouble”. My intentions were to pull the head of the fish out of the water and whack there before it knew what had happened. The Cobia darts out from under my boat and wham I am right on the money with the gaff and it right behind the head, but as I try to pull it up I realize it is too heavy to hold with one arm so I was going to have to flip it into the boat. I pull the fish into the boat and reach over for my hammer.
It was about this time that the Cobia realized what was about to happen and decided to put up a fight. Its tail comes around and before I know what hit me it has taken my legs out from underneath me. I raised the hammer to whack the fish when the tail came back hit me in the face forcing me to drop the hammer on my head and then it fell overboard. I was stunned and dazed at this point realizing that things were not going well. I did the only thing I could think of at this point. I dove onto the fish started throwing punches at its head. I believe we wrestled about my boat for about 10 minutes or so with the fish definitely getting the best of me. As we rolled about the boat at some point the fish ended up on top of me and in his struggles he somehow got on top of my motor cover. It was there that it whacked me on more time in the face and somehow flopped out of the boat.
I laid on floor of my boat for about a ½ hour trying to gather some energy; I was hurting. My vision was all blurry; I was bleeding from my head and nose and felt as if I had been run over by a pickup truck. There was not a single part of my body that was not bruised up. After a long while I managed to get up. I let the shark go and cautiously made my way back to the dock.
When I got home that day I was in bad shape. My wife took one look at me and swore I had totaled the new truck. I told her no, I got into a fight with a fish and she laughed. She didn’t believe me, and thought I had possible been jumped in a bar fight or something. After I told her of all the details she just shook her head in disbelief.
It took about a week for the swelling to come down and almost a month for the bruises on my face to start to fade some. To this day I am not sure if I am glad or upset that fish got away. In the end the fish had broken the hook on my gaff as well as trashing the inside of my boat.
I did learn one very valuable lesson from this ordeal. Never, ever under any circumstance gaff a free swimming, green fish let alone even look the wrong way at a cobia.
9/8/1987 Becca 6/15-16/2009 MHC, NC Lots of Big Fish
Occupation
I Break Stuff!!!
Thanks for posting both of these fish tales. That eel is wicked. Don't think I would want to bring it on the boat alive, that 9mm should have come out while the eel was still in the water.
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