"WHAT THE???"

This weekend looked good weather- wise but I hadn’t made any plans to go out. I was just planning on sticking around the house and doing some much needed yard work. Thank goodness, John M called and saved me from my wily wasteland of a yard. At least, on Saturday. John called late in the evening Friday night with an open seat on the “It’s Noon Somewhere” and, as always, I jumped at the chance to get out on the open ocean. I hadn’t really taken a good look at the conditions or the reports people gave lying about where the fish had been the week prior, but John mentioned heading out about 6-7 miles to once again sight- fish for cobia… you had me at “DO YOU…?” So, off we went to the R2 buoy and turned north from there. After messing around with a few scattered tripletail and not getting anything in the cooler, I did however get the “no fish funk” off the boat by dip netting a small tripletail that was hanging around an adrift buoy. We eventually found ourselves up north on Hetzle Shoal but the water was too cloudy to sight-fish around that area. So we made the snap decision to go even further north to the Chris Benson reef. Now some 28 miles north from the port and 10-15 miles out, we rerigged a few rods for trolling cigar minnows behind the boat for a chance at a passing- by king fish. About two minutes after we dropped the lines out, we had a nice sized king fish hit the bait and come halfway out of the water doing so, but it never got the hook. After a little idling around, CJ pointed out a sea turtle and lo and behold, there was a 20 lb Cobia with it. So let the scramble began! Since we had the line out the back and most of the other rods stowed we were probably entertaining to watch as we tried to get a bait in front of its nose. Luckily, once the turtle went back down the cobia and a few remora stayed with us. Luckily for them, that is, because we tried for a solid 30 minutes to get this one cobia to bite anything. We tried literally almost every lure and bait in the boat: jigs, hard lures, live shrimp, dead shrimp, cut bait…uncut bait. Until John said something to the effect of, “Looks like the cobia wants to eat the remora.” DING! Light bulb! I had bought some 2 ft plastic eels last year and I had them in my tackle box. “That’ll work,” I thought. So I tied it on and the cobia would follow it to the boat but turn away when it saw the boat….HHHAAAAA, SO FRUSTRATING!!!!!!!!!!! Ding! Another light! “We can try to gaff it when it gets close to the boat again, John.” Now, at this point, it was worth a shot. So here we go: John gets the gaff ready and I lure our dinner close to the boat and, WHIFF! John misses with the gaff only to have the cobia freak out and SLAM the eel. “????????????????????? What the?!” I thought as my line was screaming off the reel and POP! It came off. F Me. Oh well. It was great having the chance to get a true A$$ kicking. Now, after it popped off, I took a last ditch effort cast back toward where he had swam away and as we were just standing around, licking our wounds, WHAM! a king fish grabs the eel and starts smoking me AGAIN!!! And you guessed it: POP. It swims away with half my $9 eel…F Me again! That was it. We were out of time and had to head back to dry land and live as land lovers for the next week, defeated and dejected. Or so I thought… Once everything was cleaned up from the cobia frenzy and again stowed, we headed back south toward the mouth of the port. I returned to the swivel chair next to Capt. John, popped my earphones in, turned the i-pod back to shuffle (this is my usual activity when running with John) and kept a keen eye out for any dark shadowy travelers that might be a holding a redemption fish for us. About 10 minutes into the run back, I was head-banging to some old school Metallica when John threw the boat into neutral and started yelling, “Big cobia, big cobia on the surface!” In one sweeping instinctive motion, I leapt to my feet (but first put down my beer) and headed to the front of the boat, grabbing my rod on the way. Sure enough, there was a ray covered in BIG cobia. First cast I pulled two 50+ pounders off the ray and the same stinking thing that has happened now 4 times this year happened yet again. They followed my jig (pink, of course; this time with the second half of that giant eel as the trailer) to the boat and I opened my bail to drop the jig. When one of them hit, it then swam back to the surface straight up at me and that just built up more and more slack in the line ‘til it just spit it out. Now I can see all this as it’s happening every time and I can’t even describe what kind of emotions go through you when you think you have an epic fish on the line only to watch it look up at you and BLEAH just spit it out. No biggie, though: the ray was still within casting range-- not quite visible at this point because it had gone toward the east into the glare of the sun-- but I knew roughly where it was so I gave it another heave and reeled in a few times and WHAM!!! FISH ON!!!!! Here’s the weird part I wanted to write about today… I still had the earphones in from the run back and throughout the first cast and into the bite after the second cast I was listening to my favorite music, a little Metallica. But when I first settled into what was about a 20 minute fight, the music changed to some classical crap like Beethoven or something (I just went and checked back on the i-pod and it was Mozart’s –andante divertimento K-136 whatever that is). Nothing wrong with Beethoven or Mozart, but when you’re in the heat of the moment and stressed about losing yet another fish and having to walk the plank if this one gets off, you don’t want elevator music playing in your head. It was so strange to have it going in that moment, though. No sooner did the classical music stop then a Brittney Spears song started playing or something like it. I remember asking if John and CJ could hear it, risking the embarrassment of them thinking I had gone softy or something. Anyways, back to the fish now on the line and the stress I was under to get him in. After a few deep runs and a formidable fight (inevitably falling to my beautiful handcrafted Crowder rod and a nice shiny Penn spinner commanding control of the situation at hand), John used his gaffing expertise and put an end to our long drawn-out day of getting a butt-kicking handed over by some wily pelagics. Phew! Got one in the cooler! Didn’t have any more time to get after that ray again; I had to be back to port to make Blythe, Critter and my dinner engagement. Ultimately, it was an awesome day on the water and I had a fantastic time with some good friends. Sunday, John stoked up the smoker and put on some cobia ribs, I brought over some shrimp and wild pig to throw on and we all ate like kings.