SW FL-Bonita Beach:24 lb. cobia, goliaths, snapper, Spanish

[fishbuster]

I fished 17 miles out of New Pass on Thursday, 8/23, with Paul Fenwick, Pamela Harden, Chris Dicon, John Priddy and Jackie Myers. We caught seven keeper mangrove snapper, a few Spanish mackerel and porgies, and released two goliath grouper each about 20 pounds before we hit the jackpot with a 24 pound cobia. We had hooked a small remora on a shrimp, and the cobia was hanging around trying to eat the shrimp protruding from the remora’s mouth (cobia tend to swim with remora.) With a little coaxing, the cobia swam boat-side. I grabbed my gaff, and hitting it lucky, got the fish dead-on. A green cobia is notorious for its power and ability to tear up everything in the boat, and I was prepared for the worst, but I was lucky--the way the gaff caught him, he didn’t even wiggle. (see photo)

Friday, fishing in 35-42 feet out of New Pass with Joe Lester, Paul Schaffer, and brothers Joe and John Berra, we released most of what we caught, except a few nice snapper for the group’s dinner. We caught lane snapper, mangrove snapper, a small hogfish, red grouper shorts to 18 ½ inches, triggerfish, porkfish, whitebone porgies and lots of ladyfish. A couple anglers had a couple of nice Spanish mackerel hooked, but they got their lines wrapped around each other and broke those off. We had a goliath try to eat one of our snappers on the way up, so we tossed the snapper back out for bait and released a 25 pound goliath. We were broken off by a larger goliath a while later. The water temperature was hot—91.1 degrees.

[FLKingFisher]

Great report, thanks for posting it. It's nice to see reports from this neck of the woods.

Brian