Today my fishing buddies were Eric and Ron Coppola, and their buds Anton Mitchell and Chris Gordon for a half day of fishing on 8A reef northeast of Port Canaveral. Since we were doing the half day thing and were in no hurry to get out we left my place at 8:00 AM. We cleared the locks and ran in to the pogies at the end of the wharf at Cape Marina. The pogies we got in the port were in a word "huge", much larger than you would ordinarily see, in fact some of them were probably close top a pound and a half. Anyway, with the bait secured we were off to 8A for some slow trolling on what turned out to be a flat calm and beautiful day.

First to hook up was Eric's father Ron on a nice cobia which he fought for about 20 minutes on 20# spinning tackle. We never got him quite close enough to sink the iron and unfortunately he broke off about 20 feet from the boat. Fishing was steady most of the day and we had a bunch of good hits from kings and had the pogies not been so large our hookup ratio would certainly have been much higher.

Finished out our day with Anton catching and then safely releasing his first Sailfish after a 45 minute fight on 20# spinning tackle. It was a fabulous finish to a great day on the water with a great group of guys. Back at the house by 3:00 PM and with some fixins' for a fish fry and some great memories.

Final tally for the day:

1 Sailfish brought aboard briefly for pictures and then safely released.
2 Barracuda safely released.
4 Kingfish for dinner.
1 Cobia lost close to the boat.
2 Atlantic Sharpnose sharks for the table. BTW, they taste good!