Blues, lack of Spanish, and a surprise Bull Red

[SeaPlusPlus]

Left the dock at 6:48 am and headed out. Beautiful morning, not much wind. Was surprised that docks were not crowded.



Motored over to Cape Henry for with two items on the agenda: 1) Pick up some Bluefish for cut flounder bait, and 2) See if the Spaniards had arrived yet.

Ran four rods, 1) #00 Gold Clark Spoon on 15' of 20lb test flouro leader on a 2oz inline, 2) #00 Silver Clark Spoon on same leader/weight, 3) #0 Silver Clark Spoon on a #1 planer with 15' of 20lb flouro leader, and 4) #0 Gold Clark Spoon on the same leader/planer setup.

Got everything set up and then sit back and wait.


Initial trolls were from the white house to the Lighthouse in 30' of water, then back in 15-20' of water, then back in 40-50' of water. Blues scattered all throughout, picked up around 8-9 smaller ones, but good for stripping for flounder.





Tried various speeds (4-7kts) but just Bluefish (which is what we were half after too for bait so didn't want to completely loose them by speeding up).

Decided to round the cape and head south to see if anything else would happen. Made it down to about 40th street throughout various depths, picking up a slightly larger class of Bluefish (nothing to call home about though). Turned around and worked our way back. About 80th street saw another boat about 300 yards ahead and starboard of us hooked up with something nice, slowed down to just in gear (about 1.5kts) to go around them/watch and one of the rods doubles over.

At first I thought one of the planers had just snagged something, but it was a inline sinker rod, and it was doing the fishy twitch while doubled over. Sean was the closest to the rod and he grabbed it, while Chris and I cleared the other rods, there was obviously a nice fish on the rod. Caught a few glances of it from about 40' away and it looked very Cobia like which made us all very excited cause that would be the boat's first Cobia. Sean took it easy since the leader was 20lb flouro, getting him to the boat after about 20-30 minutes. Had a couple of decent runs taking line, but when he finally got it about 20' from the boat and near the surface it swam right under the boat and was clear that it was a nice big red, very cool!

Got it the 15' from the boat and then grabbed a rag and started hand lining the 15' of leader, we only had my smaller net on board so netting it was a bit of a challenge but Chris did a great job, the fish was literally 1/2 out of the net but got it in the boat.






Measured 40" and bottomed out our 30lb scale. Brought it along side the boat and after about 2 minutes of breathing it took off on its own. Amazing fish on a #00 Silver Clark spoon.

Trolled that area for a while longer at slower speeds but didn't pick up anything else except Blues. Headed over to the first around noon to see if we could get some flatfish but after about 45 minutes it was just way to hot.

Went to dockside to grab lunch in the AC and then headed home to clean the boat/strip and lightly salt the Bluefish which are now in the freezer. Was a good day on the water.

[copout]

Cool stuff & a beast of a red!
When you say too hot, what you afternoon temp like up that way? It hasn't even gotten above 87 down here yet!

[SeaPlusPlus]

Haha thanks. High yesterday was 94 degrees, max humidity was 90 min was 39. Wayyyyy too hot for my to sit in a boat with no wind.

[Dilligaf]

think i saw you hauling ass 3 fridays ago headed to the eastern shore. i was at bouy 13 black drum fishing and headed in when you flew by lol. boat looks sweet. it was slick calm that day prolly around 5 or 6 pm.