Our First Cobia Caught off Haulover

We woke up early today to go trolling hoping for some tuna or mahi, the seas were very rough. Noaa had said 2-4ft, but it was more like 4-6 in the morning. We loaded up the live well and went out and trolled and trolled for hours from 100ft out to 1200 feet, not even a single bite. Finally we decided to head in to do some bottom fishing. We went to good ole #44 on my gps and set up in about 35 ft of water. We didn’t have any chum or anything, just pilchards and some old ballyhoo for cut bait.

Things started off ok, I caught a red grouper off the bottom who wasn’t quite bit enough, then a African pompano on the flat lined pilchard. Krystle and my dad were having fun catching yellowtails and other snapper.

After a while the bite had shut down so I tried dropping down a butterflied piece of ballyhoo and ended up catching a small grunt. While reeling the grunt in I noticed something was chasing it, immediately I thought it was a nurse shark. I gave the rod to Krystle so she could have some fun with it. She jigged the grunt a few times and opened the bail while the “shark” ate the grunt. We let him have for a minute or so and then closed the bail and proceeded to fight him up. Shes fighting a nice sized “shark” on my light weight ugly stick rated for 10-15lb line. Luckily its spooled with 30lb braid. Anyways shes having a hell of a time fighting this fish in with him making several runs down deep. No one on the boat thought much of it as we though it was a shark and we’re just having some fun, Krystle even stopped to pose for pictures while reeling him in. Everyone was laughing and having a good time. Then once she got the fish to the surface we noticed this was no shark…. it was a cobia! Boy everyone got excited then, I immediately called for the gaf and stuck the fish good bringing him in the boat on the first shot.

Cobia ended up being 40 inches to the fork and just about 20 pounds.