Cobia on the Ruff One

After a few days in the Smokies my brother and I headed to my folks house on Amelia Island Florida. It being my first time to my parents new home I was exited to see what they left the North Country for. After arriving my father and I solidified plans to fish for the next 2 days on the Gulf Coast with My Aunt and Her Husband. We would be launching the boat from Homosassa. We left early the next morning and soon after hit the water on the appropriately named boat the Ruff One.

We headed down the Homassasa River to the Gulf after about an hour cruise we located the structure Tom Chancey had marked on his GPS. It was a 4 foot pile of rocks in about 20 feet of water. This was not going to be a typical Ruff Waters outing we were not throwing flies we were using live bait and plugs. We hooked a few sharks that broke off one was a spinner shark that jumped 4 feet in the air spinning the whole time! Finally after an hour or so I hooked my first Cobia I was using a trout weight spinning rod and was in for a real fight. We managed to net the fish it measured 32 inches it weighed about 18 lbs. We fished for another hour at the rocks caught a small grouper and a blue fish then headed to a shrimp boat wreck. We put the boat in idle up current from the wreck and floated over. 5 cobia waited down current from the wreck using the sunken vessel to ambush bait fish. Tom Chancey hooked the first cobia he quickly landed the fish and released it giving me a chance to cast to the others wham the fight was on! This time I was using a heavier rod and easily landed the fish even though it was bigger then the last one. The opportunity to cast to these fish and watch them gang up on our bait was fantastic. Cobia are pure muscle and put up an excellent fight!

Fish On!

On our second day out we faced some choppy water and windy conditions. We headed for the same rocks we fished our first day out the fishing started out slowly as the seas got higher and higher. We decided to fish another half hour then head in before things got ugly. As we were getting ready to pull anchor and head out a nice cobia pounded my pin minnow and the fight was on this was my last and biggest fish of my Florida vacation (not bad).

My father and I

I will be building a Salt water fly rod for my next Cobia trip. Most of the research I have done says not to use anything lighter then a 12 wt. I guess I will be adding 12 0r 13 wt to my growing list of rod builds.