Ran out of Rudee early Saturday morning, to the eye burning smoke from the NC Peat Fires. Broke the inlet and headed south. Stopped at a buoy along our way, saw something on the surface. Could it be? Nope, no cobia, but a whole school of Trigger Fish. Played with them for a while. Figured out, they will eat a fly. Teany, tiny, gray over white clouser, shad size.(I had a shad box in my bag still) Took a few on our teaser rig bait as well. Hella on fighting fish. D-Man even broke a 10wt on one, high sticking like a mofo.
....and yes, they are also now confirmed as TASTY!!!!
Temps looked low as we continued on all the way to the NC line. Re-grouped our game plan, and decided to start heading towards a new spot to try chumming on to the East. As we headed East North East, temps increased, and not long after, ran right over two cobia. Came off plane, swooped back around, waited for a moment, got in position as they resurfaced. FlyOv made a booming cast, awesome follow and take by the first fish. As the fish came past the boat after hookup, the other fish was still with it. D-Man threw a nice cast right in front of it, and we were off to the races with a double on cobes.
FlyOV's first to the boat,
D-Man's decided to be a real warrior. Long fight. As he's fighting the fish, out of the corner of his eye, he says, "Is that another cobia?" to which FlyOV replys, "No, it's an 8ft shark!!!!" So FlyOV threw a fly at it, but it wanted nothing to do with anything, didn't seem to really want the cobia either thankfully. While we were all on the bow focused on the fight, something big aired out and crashed behind us, maybe a kink mac, whatever it was, it had some size from the splash it made very close to the boat.
Tappered tippet boy finally gets it to the boat....
...and Banditos it with love,
Continued on our journey, without seeing much else. Blew a ray with a cobe following it, and maybe a turtle.
Once we arrived, setup, and just drifted with the bag. Not even 5 minutes, FlyOV starts throwing to a shark at the transom. Dang, that was quick. Little bit of a lull, couple of onesey twoeseys, sounded out my new shark call (beating on the bow of the boat), and they came, from the front of the boat. A gang of about 20 black tips arrived all at once, and as they passed under the boat, we noticed they had a friend, a nice sized cobia in the middle of the pack. So I threw everything at it, D-Man and FlyOV were like golf caddies handing me something new every few casts. No love, and the Cobia finally didn't show again. Caught all the blacktips we could want. Even got some Barbarian Bender action on the 13wt, probably a 5-6ft BlackTip.
We didn't really take any pics of the sharks, because we were constantly just in rotation of rigging, catching, de-hooking. Plus, I'm kind of over the whole risk of getting laced up by one for a pic.
Then our friend Mr. Cobia returned. Hard to believe, but it appeared to be the same one. I've never seen one come back to the slick, but this one did. Again, I tried everything with the caddies feeding me new clubs. Nada, so FlyOV finally got it to eat. Another long battle, as seas were building. I would say the seas, jumped in those 30 minutes. All the while we still had BlackTips at the back of the boat. While waiting on FlyOV's battle, I even hooked another shark, but after thinking about crossed lines, and dealing with the rest, just palmed it, and popped it off.
FlyOV, chalked up another.
With building seas, fired the motor off, and headed for the ramp.
Another awesome day on the water spent with friends.
I've got a ton of craptacular video to sift thru. I'll try and get some footage up in a few days. I know there is at least a couple of shots of the blacktip aquarium in the video.
Later, Harry