A taste of spring

Wow, I just realized that it has been 6 days since I posted something. Well the the last five days have truly been spring like. After the coldest week of this winter, we were blessed with five of the best days of this year. Temperatures were in the low 80's and the ocean was calm and this is a perfect recipe for fun. On Thursday I picked up a last minute charter with Joe Dibartolomeo and his buddy Bob. I don't think these guys knew what they signed up for. I broke them in easy with some spanish mackerel down at the mackerel hole, then it was off to hunt the big jacks. I didn't have to go far before I found the first school of jacks. Bob was the one who had the pleasure of catching the big jack and I think he gained a whole new respect for how hard those guys pull. After landing the first jack I had to relocate the school and in a matter of minutes we were on them again but, this time they were spooky and we could not get close enough to get a cast off. As I waited for them to pop up again I was panning the surface when out or the corner of my eye I saw some brown torpedoes on the surface. Cobia! I grabbed the rod from Joe and made a cast right in front of the fish, they jumped all over my topwater plug and after hooking the fish it was Joe's turn to get his workout. Joe had about a twenty minute fight ahead of him and I think if the fight was twenty one minutes Joe may have given up but he didn't and Joe was rewarded with a 43 pound cobia. Joe and Bob did a great job, I really enjoyed fishing with these guys.

I knew at that point that I had a few good days ahead of me. The next day I fished with Rob Crowder, we had a new prototype fly rod we wanted to test. After we caught a couple big jacks on the new fly rod we headed to King Neptune for lunch. No cobia on Friday.

Friday night I fished with long time client Ted Renna, we had one of those nights on the dock lights that reminded me of the old days, probably 20 snook on fly with a handful of jacks mixed in. Saturday I fished with good friend Capt. Scott Cormier and photographer David McCleaf. I told David how he was going to get photos of jacks and cobia and well that was the kiss of death. We had a fun day catching mackerel, bluefish, and a few smaller jacks but, no big jacks or cobia were found that day. It is still early in the spring so the schools are still hit or miss. I did get a couple jumps out of a tarpon that was probably close to the 100 pound mark before he straightened my hook. That was probably the highlight of the day. Sunday was back to charters, I had Jimmy Granbery from Nashville with his uncle Buddy in the boat and once again I wanted to take advantage of the spring like weather. We hunted jacks all the way north and only managed to find a few schools of smaller jacks 6 to 8 pounds along with huge schools of bluefish. We had a blast catching bluefish and jacks on topwater plugs most of the morning. We spent about an hour trying to get the tarpon to eat but, they wanted no parts of what we had so it was back down the beach. On the way back to the marina I kept passing the schools of jacks and bluefish occasionally stopping to catch one or two, then like Thursday we came across a nice group of cobia. The first one was small for cobia standards but ate a topwater plug and the second one was about 20 pounds and it ate a DOA terroreyez. I always preach that the terroreyez is a crab lure, even though it is shaped like a small baitfish, it's color (rootbeer) and the way it sinks makes it a great crab lure and once again the cobia proved my point. Last night a weak cold front moved through our area so the beach is better for surfing then fishing right now but, I am sure it won't be long and I will be back out there chasing big fish on light tackle and fly rods. Sorry for no cobia pictures but for those of you that have caught cobia you know how ballistic they go once in the boat.

Thanks again for reading and don't forget to sign on as a follower of this blog. I like to see who is reading. Keep posted for some exciting upcoming news from the Stuart Flyfishing home front.

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