Thursday, Capt. Jorj Head, (757) 262-9004, and Scott Elford went fishing with their son’s, Hayden and Spencer. The PSWSFA Youth and Ladies Flounder and Croaker Tournament was underway. They started out fishing for flounder near the Cell. They caught their limit of 16 flounder and then went looking for cobia. They hooked 6. They pulled the hook on one, broke another off and caught 4. The boys did all the cranking, each catching two cobia. Spencer Elford released a 50-inch fish to qualify for a release citation. Hayden Head’s largest cobia was 45 inches long.
Yesterday, I went looking for cobia. We were on a bit of a mission. Dr. John Graves had never caught a cobia. He is from the west coast, and they don’t have them there. He’s a top fisheries scientist and has caught fish all over the world but never a cobia. Catching one has been on his to-do list so we set out to check this one off his list. I had called Jorj earlier and we were supposed to fish with him. I figured John had the best chance fishing with Jorj. Well, Jorj got chartered so it was back to my boat. Got a crew together and off we went to the bay. We just cruised around the bayside of the CBBT, from the 4th island to the high rise, not close to the bridge. We were about where they have those barges anchored up. We saw right many cobia, in ones and twos. Some we did not get cast on, others had hooks pull or fish that would not bite. We saw a school of red drum and made a cast with a bucktail. In the middle of the school was a little cobia. It was quicker than the drum. Mission accomplished. John caught his first cobia. He caught a larger one a bit later. We ended up catching 3 cobia. We saw several schools of red drum but never caught any. We did get another good cast on a school but they just went down and did not eat. Roger Burnley made a cast to what looked like a cruising cobia, it turned and ate the eel. I thought we had cobia number 4 but it turned out to be a shark. We saw a couple schools of big jack crevalle while cruising around. Brandon Bartlett cast to one of them and hooked up with his bucktail. Good fight on light spinning gear. The jack was about 49 inches long and Brandon released it for a citation. It was a nice afternoon on the water. Ric Burnley ran out and joined us in his boat. They saw two cobia and caught them both. I don’t know how big his fish were. Our largest was 50 inches, caught by Bernie Sparrer. 
