While cobia move into South Carolina’s inshore waters this month, they can still be caught at nearshore and offshore reefs, and anglers fishing those areas usually don’t have to fight the large crowd of boats that line up in St. Helena Sound, the Broad River, and similar inshore haunts.
Keeping reels working smoothly helps increase casting distance and helps bass fishermen catch more fish.
While Buddy Bizzell usually prefers live or cut menhaden for cobia bait, he said cobia aren’t picky about what they eat. A number of other baits are good choices.
Catching a dolphin and releasing it may sound like sheer lunacy to some bluewater anglers, but there is a sound reason to let a few go each year.
Cobia, rachycentron canadum, are a pelagic fish — they travel the open ocean — but unlike most pelagic species, cobia also inhabit inshore waterways like the Broad River and St. Helena Sound, at least for short periods of time.
Few organisms in the ocean can match the fast life cycle of the dolphin fish, coryphaena hippurus. Dolphin reach sexual maturity at four to five months, where it takes a king mackerel three years to spawn. The world-record dolphin, 87 pounds was believed to be slightly less than five years old. By comparison, the world-record king mackerel, a 93-pound fish, was thought to be closer to 25 years old.
The audacity of man to believe he can create a fishing bait better then God’s own hands never ceases to amaze die-hard, live-bait anglers, especially when speckled trout are concerned. With bait moving back into the estuaries, here’s your pick of the best live baits for big specks.
1) Using a thawed, small/medium, high-quality ballyhoo, remove the bait’s eyes with an arrow shaft.
2) Use cutting pliers to remove the bait’s pectoral fins.
While most of you are humming that song from “The Lion King”, the circle of life for speckled trout begins in South Carolina marshes when two environmental factors signal mature trout that it’s time to get busy.
May and June offer great opportunities for fishermen who dream of hooking up with a powerhouse, 50-pound cobia just off the beach. But anglers must act fast if they want to get a hookup, because no matter how lazy these fish appear when cruising along the surface, they become less and less catchable every minute a boat is on the scene.
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