Cobia Mania

Palm Coast Observer
Opinion

In a recent column, I suggested you get prepared for cobia fishing. I knew they were coming soon. Well, guess what? They have arrived.

Fishermen running out of Matanzas Inlet searching for manta rays are starting to find them, and they are holding cobia.

Hopefully, the wind will cooperate and subside. This makes it a lot safer to get out of the inlet and to spot the rays. A perfect day would consist of calm flat seas and a clear, sunny sky. The optimum time of day to do your searching is between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. That is when you’ll have the least amount of glare on the water from the sun. If you’re watching the evening weather report and the meteorologist is calling for the perfect day, you may want to call in sick to work the next morning, Just don’t bring any cobia fillets to work the following day!

Fishingwise, things are happening early this year because of our warm winter.

Cobia arrived earlier than normal, and I’m also getting reports of tarpon along the beaches.

My buddy, Dave Schmeezer, in Ormond Beach, has been doing some surf fishing and jumped two tarpon this past week. He was pompano fishing when he hooked whiting. The tarpon had eaten the whiting while he was bringing it in. The one fish spooled his spinning reel, and when it got to the end, his 50-pound braided line popped. The other fish broke his 30-pound braid. Schmeezer said when the fish jumped, he could see that both were more than 100 pounds.

Inshore fishing has been producing trout, redfish, flounder, jacks, ladyfish and black drum. A couple from New Jersey who fished with me this week had a couple of 24-inch reds and some trout in the 19-inch range, along with a variety of other fish. All fish were caught on live shrimp.

Backwater fishing for redfish has also been good.

Last Saturday afternoon, I got a call from Steve Carl asking me if I would be interested in hitting the flats of Highbridge to look for some reds. Of course, my answer was yes. Carl has a boat that gets in about 5 inches of water and even with that, we had to get out and drag the boat to deeper water after we got stuck. There were tons of mullet and shrimp everywhere. We spooked a bunch of reds and a few even ran into the side of the boat. We released a 25-inch redfish. Carl went back the next morning with his dad and they landed five more big reds.