Today my fishing buddies were a wonderful family from Cocoa who brought their long time friend Danielle for a day of fishing and companionship before best friends Megan and Danielle have to leave town to get back to their college education. The target today was to have a little fun in the sun and put together enough fish for a cook out and possibly a little to be carted back to college.
     After departing from my home here in Cocoa Beach we stopped at Sunrise Marina to top off the fuel tank and give the ladies one last chance at a civilized restroom facility. We then did the customary run down the beach for pogies and found plenty of them, that's the good news, the bad news was that they were all the way down to the north end of Patrick Air Force Base. Although it's a long run down there from the port I was pleasantly surprised to see that it only added one nautical mile to the run to 8A reef. Fishing at 8A started with a double header and then shut off pretty much as quickly as it had started. We fished until about 11:30 and were able to bag six Kings with Logan's being the largest at about 25 pounds. We caught a bunch of Atlantic Sharpnose sharks which were released and one of them gave Brenda a particularly long battle and all the time we were hoping that she had hooked a Cobia. As it turned out the shark was foul hooked in the caudal fin near his claspers and this allowed him to pull really hard and when Brenda did start pulling him our direction he'd be sideways and really hard to pull in. This actually allowed me to sit down on the job for a while and get is a little good natured heckling.
    We then made the run north towards Ponce for a little bottom bumpin' and were able to catch four keeper snapper, a few more sharks. Both Megan and Danielle caught their first Cobia when three Cobia swam up to the boat. Unfortunately the the largest of the two Cobia was still a half inch short and both fish were released unharmed.
    Curtis forgot to tell me that he had a meeting that he had to attend at 6:30 PM in Merritt Island and we were having such a good time catching fish that I decided to stay a little longer than usual. We arrived back at the dock at about 6:20 PM so Megan and Curtis took off and weren't able to get in the picture at the dock.
    The weather was again beautiful until the ride home when the sea breeze kicked it up a little and we caught a little spray. Everyone had a great time and we caught a bunch of fish and I was the lucky one who got to share the day with these fine folks.

Final tally for the day:
6 Kingfish with the largest weighing around 25#
2  short Cobia with a quick picture and then released to grow up.
4 Keeper Red Snapper with 5 others released to grow up
Some short Sea Bass released
A bunch of Atlantic Sharpnose Sharks released