Today my fishing buddies were Cocoa Beach local Tommy Granados and his bud Johnny Joyner who is visiting from up north. Today's plan was a half day to put a little meat on the table and do our best to bend a few rods.
     First order of business was to procure a net full of pogies for bait which was easily accomplished a couple of miles down the beach just north of the Cocoa Beach pier. Since 8A reef has been so good to me lately I figured that if it ain't broke there's no reason to try to fix it.
     As I always do on the way out I told the guys to keep their eyes open for the big brown fish and rays and thanks to Tommy it paid off. He spotted a common stingray near the surface with an entourage of Cobia and it ended up getting our day off to a really good start. After turning the boat around I baited a couple of spinners with pogs and pitched them to the cobes and we immediately hooked up but unfortunately pulled the hooks on the only keeper of the two. After releasing the short we were able to spot the ray again and this time we hooked two keepers. One again got off some how but Johnny stuck with his ands we were able to get a start on today's groceries.
     We were unable to get back on the ray so we went on to 8A and spent the rest of our day procuring a limit of Kings and we also released a bunch of Atlantic Sharpnose sharks. The weather was beautiful except that with the lack of a breeze it was scorching hot.
     Another fun day of deep sea fishing aboard the Goin Off with plenty of bent rods and a cooler full of fish fillets for tonight's dinner.

Final tally for the day:
6 Kingfish limit with the largest weighing around 30#
2 Cobia with one keeper and one too short to keep and released to fight again another day
A bunch of Atlantic Sharpnose Sharks released