Today my half day fishing buddies were Eric Coppola and Anton Mitchell who fished with me on July 11,2008 the first time and coming back today they brought a new fisherman Steve a good buddy of theirs. Today Cobia was on their mind along with some eating fish for the table.

    First thing we ran down the beach looking for some pogies and stumbled across a whale with a calf in 29 feet of water just south of the Cocoa Beach Pier. we didn't approach the whale too closely and the picture below is the best I could do zoomed in as closely as possible. An unusual sight to say the least and a rare opportunity to see them in the wild.

    Since there was no bait on the beach and we only had a half day we took off to my first stop for cobes a not so secret wreck south of the port and upon arrival it didn't take long to get hooked up with what turned out to be our only keeper cobe of the day. It was Steves first cobia and his largest fish to date. We were able to catch, tag and safely release another three cobia and as usual one of the three was just a half inc short.

    Finished out the morning catching and five gallon bucket full of good sized sea bass and a trigger fish. Mission accomplished caught some cobia for dinner and all three in the crew caught at least one cobia, a first for all three.

Final tally for the half day trip:

1 Cobia with three others tagged and safely released.
1 Atlantic Sharpnose Shark
1 Triggerfish
Bunch of Sea Bass, Lane Snapper for the table.