Traditionally, late April in northwest Florida signals the best time to target cobia.  Not only are the fish migrating in large quantities, but it is usually when the biggest fish pass through the area on their way to Louisiana to spawn.  On any given day an angler could find a single fish, pairs, triples, or “wads” of four to twenty plus fish swimming down the beach.  For some lucky boats, they might even be fortunate enough to find that elusive “slob”, a fish over a hundred pounds.

The crew of the HEBE was kind enough to invite me back to fish so I surprised them with some breathe like a fish shirts. On my last trip the crew really liked the shirts but since they aren’t sold in the local area they were hesitant to buy them online in fear of getting the wrong size. Funny thing is that microfiber shirts and Buff type face masks aren’t widely known of yet in the Panhandle.  I saw far too  many sun baked arms and faces.

The wind forecast was perfect, southeast winds and swells every day.  Typically those conditions push the fish along the surface allowing the fish to surf along with the waves, therefore expending less energy and covering more ground.  The only thing that wasn’t working in our favor was the early morning fog followed by partly cloudy skies.  At times the conditions were tough, sometimes downright miserable with the glare on the water.  However, we fished hard and were rewarded with some great days of fishing.  We caught a few fish pushing 60lbs but never came across that monster fish that would get the heart racing.  The biggest wad we saw was about 20 fish.  After catching the biggest out of the group we left the rest alone to find some bigger fish.  Over the four days we released over a dozen fish before someone on the boat found the cobia tags.  Too bad, that would have been some great data to provide to gulf coast research laboratory.

The sharpie modified Hogy.