Robin's Reports

9/18/06 Monday's morning report

Here it is Wednesday and I'm just getting around to writing about our fishing. You can probably guess that we were totally skunked again because otherwise I would have posted sooner a big brag & picture. (haha)

The short story is that the weather was beautiful and cooperative. Seas were low, sun popped out by 10am from the haze, temps rose around 92 degrees. The water was pretty dirty all the way out 17 miles. We could have gone much further out but there wasn't a need to. The Gulf Stream had moved inward to the 16 mi point, which pushed all the nice weedlines further in.

We found 2 nice major weedlines - one at 45 ft depth and another at 62 ft. Stopped at the first one and saw a nice cobia. He was following the golden weeds perfect. Almost too perfect to see him well. As Jack readied his shrimp on the hook, I was losing sight of him with the glare. I panicked and rush Jack's throw without him having his eyes on the fish first. Whizzzzzzzzzzz, and kerplunk right on the cobia's head! What are the odds of that? There are times in a marriage when you wish for such accuracy in mind-reading as this, but that very moment was not one of them. The big guy spooked a little so Jack was reeling in the shrimp. At the back of the boat, up pops the shrimp and a large brown cobia following it!!!!! His body went into attack "flare" mode and what's that? huh? there's something big and white in my way? OH my sardines, it's a boat w/ people in it! He dove down and that was the end of seeing him. We tried and tried to relocate the guy with no such blessing to be found.

We headed deeper to the 2nd weedline at 62 ft and threw a shrimp out under a couple mats. Nothing was playing except the little bait fish. There were so cute. Too bad they don't make much of a dinner. We trolled up and down and then back in to shore.

I can't say it was a total waste. For us, we love the thrill of sight-fishing and seeing stuff on top of the water. It was our first time seeing ballyhoo skipping across the top of the water. What funny little fish. We saw numerous turtles and dolphin playing. One even came over to swim under our bow for a short time.

Once back inshore, Jack stopped at each of the bouys to drop down a shrimp and see if any tripletail or flounder were home. Bouy #5 did have some barracudas hanging out and for a brief moment, a nice 15 lb tripletail surfaced, spotted us and high-tailed it back to the bottom.

For the 2nd time this summer, we ran into the man that holds the IGFA record of largest Tripletail caught. He's a very humble man, willing to share anything you ask of him. I almost asked him for 1 of his tripletail in the cooler. There has never been a time we didn't see him cleaning some fish at the boat staging area.

Seas will be high again as Helene passes by us in the far Atlantic. Gas prices are down, so we're hoping that soon we will be able to head out again. Many reports are coming in with dolphin migrating through again and snapper/grouper heading back to the 21 & 27 fathom ridges. I can't wait to bottom fish soon.

This picture shows the edge of a weedline with those little white specs in the green are bait fish.


Happy Fishing and don't forget the sunblock!
Robin (& a cobia from this spring)