Ted and I teamed up for the cobia tournament with his wife Andy and friend John. Our plan was to just go out and have a good time fishing and hopefully get the big cobia since a cobia in a way is a luck fish. Day 1 we went out to one of my grouper spots in 29 feet out of Homosassa where I have caught several cobia in the past. We got to the spot and got a limit of gags very quickly with 4 gags over 30 inches. As we were catching grouper and chumming like crazy, trying to pull some cobia to us, another boat was trolling by us as we pulled up a grouper. The other boat decided to pull right in front of us drop anchor and within minutes he pulled in 2 nice sized cobia right off the bottom grouper fishing. Ted waved at the guys then the guys held up both cobia for us to see and left about 20 minutes later. We fished the spot with live bait and dead on top and bottom with nothing but a bunch of nice gags. We got back to the weigh in and to our surprise the biggest grouper we caught knocked the 1st place guy off top and Andy's 13 lb gag was leading the tournament. We didn't think 13 lbs would hold up and it didn't. A 17 1/2 lb gag took 1st and a 15 lb gag took 2nd. Day 2 our focus was just on the cobia since the lead cobia was only 38 lbs. We headed to a spot in Yankeetown in 18 feet where we knew we would get cobia. We got to the spot, got a small 33-34 incher and lost one a little bigger than that. The cobia were there but none with any size to them so we moved in to 15 feet and got a couple more but once again they were 32-35 inches. We did have 4 nice cobia come right up to the boat with one in the 40-45 lb range but we could not get him to eat. The biggest cobia of the 2 day tournament was only 38 lbs. It was still a lot of fun and there is always next year.




13.11 lb gag


close-up of the scale


a better pic of the big boy


Ted thought he had a big cobia








some of the keepers


our limit of gags


Leaving the river. There were more boat behind us than in front of us.




John feeding a bird in the slow zone.




Ted with another shark. Can you tell by his face that he was tired of sharks in the chum