Robin's Reports

3.27.11 - OFFSHORE with MIKE & HELEN by Robin

This will be fairly quick, but wanted to make sure that it made it onto the blog.

We were very excited that the weather was going to finally cooperate with Jack's planned 3 day weekend. He's been very busy with working his past 2 weekends and we needed some R & R. Our friends invited us onto their boat. It originally was suppose to be 3 couples, no kids, a little cobia hunting right off the beach. But, life never quite happens as we dream it up.

The other couple never did receive the invitation to fish until our drive back home from the port. Mike received some tips from folks the night before on where some fish were on Saturday. So, instead of keeping with our plans, we ran over fish to go find fish. That pretty much sums it up.

The seas were close to 5 ft rollers offshore. We put lines in at 160 ft and trolled out to 600 ft depth with only 1 knockdown and 1 phin for our efforts. Helen and I stayed green (seasick) all morning. We tried to troll back in but caught so many scattered weeds that we pulled lines and ran back in to another area around 1:30 pm . Mike wanted to try a couple weedlines that were building and we got nothing. Ran back in further to green water to try for Kings. Saw some bait pods getting picked on and put in lines there. Got nothing except for when we went past a buoy and I think that was a short strike from a barracuda. Never pierced the skin for a hook-up. (They have a lot of bone!)

Picked up those lines and headed back over the Hetzel shoals area around 3:30 pm. By this time, I could pick my head back up and was in the tower. I did spot one small manta ray holding cobia. Winds were picking up again and so the boat was hard to hold in position. Jack made a perfect cast in front of the ray, but the boat drifted behind the ray. The lure ended up hooking the ray instead. The ray sounded down and line was broke off with the lure still in the ray. What a shame. That ray had some big cobes on it. I saw the shadow of what I believe was probably a 70-100 lb cobia stalled out behind the manta ray. I kid you not. Looked vaguely like a large nurse shark to make a comparison. I'm glad Mike was in the tower with me at this point (driving the boat) and he saw it too.

Unfortunately, all my pictures from the day were lost. I don't know why or how. I'm heart-broken since I had a nice one of the mahi in the water. I had one of the monster cobia. Shoot. The only thing left on the camera was a terible video (took 4 originally) I took of the bait pod at the one stop and a shrimp boat tied to a dock inside the port.

We stopped by the Wally*Beach*Mart on the ride home and found some crab nets. They don't stock them by our house. We planned on having a big family day in the river catching blue crabs for a low-country boil tonight. As it turned out, the much-needed rain showed up and gave us an all-day soaking. So, here I sit. No pictures. Only a story. A much different start to our Spring Break week than expected. I'll post up the video of the bait fish but don't get your hopes up. Half of the video is of the sky! (I'm a pitiful videographer.)

Offshore bait crash 3.27.11 from Robins Reports on Vimeo.