“I’d sure like to catch a Cobia.  I’ve been trying for several years and only caught a few shorts.”  I hear that several times each summer and I don’t remember many folks going home without catching one.  If folks want to target Cobia, we generally catch them.  In fact, it is an unusual day in the summer when we don’t catch several with 50% or more being legal whether we are targeting them exclusively or not.  This doesn’t mean that Cobia are accidental catches for Whopper Stopper, though. 

Cobia are, by far, the easiest to catch of all large fish on this coast.   For the life of me, I can’t see why more folks don’t catch Cobia almost every trip.  Here are a few tips that should make you a better Cobia fisherman.

Live bait works best but I often catch them on a Bonita fillet lying on the bottom while fishing for Tarpon and Sharks.

Basic rig #1 is the rig that catches about 65 % of the Cobia brought aboard Whopper Stopper.  Basic rig #XX   catches most of the rest with a few taken on artificial lures and flies.

Wire leader is not necessary except when lots of Kingfish and big Spanish mackerel are around.  Sharks are seldom enough trouble to make me use wire.

Where?  Darn near anywhere from the rivers and flats to grass lines a hundred miles offshore. 

A large percentage of grass flats Cobia are accidentally hooked by Trout fishermen on bait or artificial lures.   Notice that I said “hooked” instead of caught.  Fifty % of folks who are fishing for Trout will loose every Cobia they hook because they are not prepared for a fish that can pull more than 5# of drag.  I have seen more than one person grab the spool to stop the fish when line started screaming off the reel.  Not a good technique when you are fishing with 8# test!  I’d venture to say that 25% of the boats out Trout fishing on a given day don’t have a gaff aboard and if they do, they don’t have a clue how to use it.!

Lots of decent sized Cobia are hooked on the flats but the larger ones are landed by guys who are prepared.  For most shallow water Cobia, 8# mono is entirely adequate as long as you have a smooth drag, set right.  With a 6’ long 20# shock leader with a foot or so of 50# mono for a bite leader, I’ll cast at any Cobia that ever swam and feel pretty confident as long as I have Rhett handling the boat.  In deep water, light tackle isn’t a good idea because you can’t apply enough pressure to lift a fish. 

We catch more Cobia while bottom fishing for Grouper than any other time.  Why?  I make 10 or more moves most days.  Sooner or later we are going to drop a baitfish in front of a Cobia and hook up.    Move around enough and you should get lucky too.  Cobia hang out on the same rocks that hold Grouper.

Ok, so you are too lazy to move around.  Invite Cobia to come to you.  Enough fresh chum will pull Cobia a long distance.  Frozen ground chum works but fresh is best every time.  If you are going to stay in one spot and chum, pick a good spot.  Large breaks, channel edges, especially channel bends and intersections, artificial reefs and wrecks are all great spots to chum.  How you are anchored in relation to the spot you are fishing is all important.  I can’t stress this enough.  Try to anchor so that your chum ! disperses over as much of the structure as possible.  Your baits should be deployed so that any fish that follows the scent trail of your chum will see them.   Chumming on the grass flats and around deeper bars works fine too.

Last summer, I added a new fishing weapon to my arsenal, a Chum Churn.  The Chum Churn is the best new piece of equipment I have added to my boat in years.   On tough fishing days in mid-summer, sooner or later you are going to call in a Cobia.  Most days it doesn’t take long.  The sound made by the Chum Churn may be as attractive to Cobia as the scent and chopped bait trail it produces.  I’ve seen Cobia, Spadefish and Mangrove Snapper come up long before they could have scented the chum.

Think about this.  If your bait is right on the bottom, it may be hard to see for a Cobia that may be swimming a few feet off the bottom.   I like to have one bait about 6 feet off the bottom and another right under the boat within 3 feet of the surface.  Believe me, this shallow bait gets bit often and you better make sure that the drag isn’t locked.  A baitfish suspended about 6’ under a float and about 30 feet behind the boat gets hits from fish attracted by the chum.

I can’t help but mention fishing channel markers.  Everybody fishes channel markers and they catch Cobia.  Sometimes you need to stand in line or have a reservation to fish some of the gang markers.  One Saturday last year I was chumming for Spanish mackerel and Cobia along the edge of the Crystal River Coal Canal.  A steady procession of boats stopped to fish marker 28.  As soon as one boat left, another tied up (illegal) or anchored near the marker.  This went on the entire tide.  If there isn’t a boat fishing a channel marker, I ride by close and look.  If I see a Cobia, I usually catch it. 

Which bait?  Most of the time it doesn’t matter what live bait you use.  Cobia will eat about anything from Glass minnows to Stingrays, crabs to Filefish and seagulls to turtles.  Live Eels are hot bait but not always easy to obtain.  For tournament fishing, I wouldn’t enter unless I had several Eels.  Eels are a pain in the butt to handle because of the slime and a fresh out of the well Eel will twist up into a ball and around your line.  In my opinion, a 10-12” live Squid is the best of all baits for almost any fish I fish for.  I don’t think anything t! urns down a Squid.   Unfortunately, the only time I get to use a Squid Is when I catch one at night.

From my point of view, a Cobia is the best fish we have around here.  It is great to eat, much more fun to catch than Grouper and they average a heck of a lot bigger than most other fish.  For many of my clients, the Cobia they catch will be the biggest fish they have ever caught.  Try to explain why you have to release the biggest fish they have ever caught when they catch a 32 incher. 

I have a couple of other Cobia fishing tips that I share with my clients if the occasion to use them arises.   I gotta hang on to something.

It is a pretty good bet that 90% of the fish live in 10% of the available water. That makes it mighty easy to fish where there are no fish. Now, all you have to do is find that 10% of the water where the fish hang out to catch a bunch of fish. It’s that simple. (Yeah, right.)

First you have to decide what you want to catch. Grouper are easiest of all because they are well known "home bodies." Pick up a chart of your area. Look it over carefully. Notice abbreviations like "rks," (rocks) or "wrk," (wreck.) Grouper like rocks and wrecks. Good areas to look for are drastic depth changes in a small distance. These areas are worth checking. How do you check a place out? If the water is clear enough and shallow enough, look over the side of the boat as you ride by. If it is murky or too deep, watch your depth finder. Sudden changes in depth may be rocks. Slow down and run back over these places and determine whether the bottom is hard or not. Hard bottom with erratcic changes is generally good for Red Grouper and sometimes for Gags too. Most times, Gags hang out around ledges, large rocks, cracks in the bottom and wrecks or artificial reefs. Red Grouper ! are by far the easiest of all Grouper to catch because they are widely distributed over hard bottom and they will bite about anything. Grunts and Black Seabass inhabit "Red Grouper" bottom and to a lesser extent areas that hold Gags.

I mentioned artificial reefs in the last paragraph. Most are fished pretty hard because they are easily found but they do hold fish. Grouper aren’t so easy to catch on these reefs but other fish are drawn to the baitfish that hang out here. Pelagic fish like Kingfish, Spanish Mackerel, Bonita (Little Tuny), Barracuda, and Cobia are common on these sites. They are easy to catch if you use some of the live bait fish that abound on the artificial reefs. Grunts, Snapper, Permit, Amberjacks, and a host of others will take baits fished near bottom. Live shrimp work well on some of the smaller species but you will hook some critters you can’t hold too. LORAN/GPS numbers are available for these artificial reefs from your area FMP office and in bait shops too.

In past articles I have harped on watching for birds and striking fish. I’ll mention it here too. If you see fish striking, you have found the place to fish. They are there and eating. Birds hover and dive over striking fish, eating scraps of baitfish or those driven up to the surface by the feeding fish beneath. In an earlier article I described how to tell which species is working the bait.

Inshore, look around points, gaps in oyster bars, logs, and creek mouths just as you’d look for Bass in fresh water. When the water is clear, you can often see Redfish and Sheepshead far enough ahead of the boat to get a cast at them before they spook. Trout are hard to see but they hang out along edges too. Casting along shore lines and over grass will work for Trout in Spring and Summer, especially early or late in the day.

Get as high as you safely can in your boat, wear good polarized glasses and a wide brimed hat and you will see more fish. You’ll also see changes in the bottom like potholes, sandy areas, rocks, etc. Most fish like edges. Fish the edge of sandy patches and you might pick up a Flounder or two. Pompano and Permit often follow the edges of rocks and potholes too. Basically, look for differences. Be observant. Take notes if you must and above all, pay attention to the tide. Don’t get caught far up a shallow creek on a falling tide or you might be in for several hours of swearing and swatting sand gnats and mosquitoes while you wait for enough water to float out on. "Been there, done that."