Take a look this month and find Cape Lookout cobia action. Here’s how.
Nothing breaks the ice for saltwater anglers seeking big fish like the spring cobia run. The fish swarm the Crystal Coast in May, with the epicenter of the action being Morehead City.
While the majority of fishermen soak either live or cut baits on the bottom, Capt. George Beckwith of Down East Guide Service has taken the action to a higher level, figuratively and literally speaking. He boasts nearly 100-percent success on days when the weather is calm enough to sight-fish.
“A good day of bait-fishing from an anchored boat results in maybe three or four bites,” he said. “But a good day of sight fishing is seeing 10 to 15 fish and catching half of them. Our best day of sight fishing was catching 38, and we saw several hundred.”
The fish can show up anywhere, anytime, from back in the sounds out to the tidelines, even as far offshore as the Gulf Stream. However, most of the fish Beckwith catches are hooked within two miles of the beach. The magic water temperature that brings the fish that close is 65 degrees.
Beckwith learned how to spot and catch cobia catch from on high when he chartered a trip with Capt. Rick Caton out of Oregon Inlet four years ago. Caton pioneered North Carolina’s sight-fishing methods for cobia, and Beckwith caught 16 cobia on that trip, realizing that, from a tall tower, there were many more cobia than fishermen could ever imagine.
“I immediately put a tower on my 23-foot Parker,” he said. “I realized there was no reason the same number of cobia could not be caught father south. The first time I tried sight-fishing for cobia at Morehead City from my tower, there were 10 boats anchored at Shackleford. The first buoy we looked at had 10 cobia, and nobody was fishing anywhere near it.”
Beckwith said anything that increases viewing height creates an advantage, but he has seen dangerous practices, including anglers standing on center consoles and stepladders. He said anglers should use common sense and stay safe, rather than risking injury or falling overboard from such precarious perches.
When Beckwith sight-fishes, he has at least two clients onboard. The angler beside him in the tower holds a rod rigged with a bucktail. The angler on the deck has rod rigged with a live menhaden or eel.
Eels are easy to keep alive. Beckwith wraps them in paper towels inside a plastic bag and puts them on ice, where they stay alive for days. He holds them with a paper towel while hooking them through the lips with a single-hook rig. Menhaden are fished on the same rig and can be kept alive by dangling them on the rig inside the live well.
“My favorite lure for sight fishing is a 2- or 3-ounce jig I tie myself,” Beckwith said. “It’s red and orange because cobia key on those colors. Most of the cobia we clean are full of calico crabs, which are orange and red.”
Beckwith thinks cobia swim down to eat the crabs, then return to the surface where they are warmed by the sun. He said sunning cobia may be at the surface because absorbed heat helps digestion, and they are also gathering strength necessary for spawning.
When casting to cobia, it’s important for anglers to coordinate their casts so they hit the water at the same time. Anglers in the tower cast first, and the angler with the live bait holds his cast in reserve.
“If there are multiple fish, time your casts so the jigs hit the water at the same time,” Beckwith said. “We see such large schools that an opportunity is lost if the timing is not right. If you don’t get two or three jigs to hit the water at the same time, all of the fish are going to follow the first bucktail down. The guy on the deck backs up the angler or anglers in the tower by making a cast with live bait, if fish don’t strike the jigs.”
Although the fish are visible when the cast is made, the strike is usually not be seen. A cobia follows the jig as the angler pumps and reels. Most anglers make the mistake of swimming the jig all the way to the boat.
“The trick is to drop the jig down once the fish sees it,” he said. “The follows it down and you keep jigging it until you feel the strike. The fish strikes it as it falls and, when you raise the rod, you feel the fish and set the hook. If you bring the fish all the way to the boat following the jig, it sees the boat and swims away.”
Once a fish is hooked, the angler keeps the line tight with heavy drag. Sometimes, a cobia swims right back to the boat.
“It’s a mistake to gaff a green cobia,” Beckwith said. “The fish might swim up to the boat quickly out of curiosity. Instead of gaffing it, I tap it with the gaff and let it run off 80 or yards or so. The next time it comes to the boat, we gaff it if we want to keep it or get it in a dip net, unhook and release it.”
To gaff a cobia, the fish should be struck under the dorsal fin, rather than the head. If the fish is gaffed near the head, it can twist off the gaff.
“I’ve seen cobia come in one side of the boat, twist off the gaff and go right out the other side,” Beckwith said. “If you’ve fought the fish long enough to tire it, that won’t happen.”
Beckwith uses medium-heavy or heavy action spinning rods with 8000 series reels spooled with 65-pound braid. To the line, he ties a 3-foot leader of 80-pound fluorocarbon.
“Braid helps because you can pack so much on the reel,” he said. “If one angler is hooked up and I see another cobia in the distance, that angler is going to have to hang on while I chase down the other fish. I want multiple hookups, with everyone fighting a fish at the same time.”
Cobia may show up anywhere, at any depth. From his tower, Beckwith sees them on the bottom at Beaufort Inlet, on Cape Lookout shoals and on tidelines.
“Lots of people are trolling for Spanish mackerel, bottom fishing for grouper or fishing for dolphin this time of year,” he said. “Cobia are often on the same wrecks, reef and livebottoms where anglers are catching other species. A cobia might be in water four feet or 140 feet deep and follow any hooked fish to your boat. If you have a spinning rod rigged with a jig, you can catch it. You just have to stay ready to take advantage of the opportunity.”
Another guide who recently caught the sight-fishing bug is Capt. Mike Taylor, who added a second helm station over the T-top of his 23-foot Ranger bay boat.
“I fish the buoys near Morehead City and keep watching for big schools of (menhaden),” Taylor said. “I run the beach in the shallow water from the inlets all the way up the east side of Cape Lookout.”
Like Beckwith, Taylor watches for schools of rays, turtles and individual cobia, but the first thing he tries to locate is a school of menhaden. After probing the edges of the baitfish school for cobia with a jig, he catches some of the menhaden in a cast net and places them in a livewell.
“I use jigs, but I also pitch shad,” he said. “I hook them on the same jighead I use with soft plastics, with the hook penetrating the roof of the mouth in front of the eyes. I also Carolina-rig them with 3 feet of 80-pound fluorocarbon leader, a 4-ounce egg sinker and an 8/0 or 9/0 circle hook. If the baits are small, I downsize the hook, but I use the biggest shad I can find.
Taylor fishes with Shimano 7-foot Trevala spinning rods and Shimano Stradic 5000 series reels spooled with 50-pound braid. His braid-to-leader connection is a double uni-knot or uni-knot splice.
“The rod is unbreakable, and you need that insurance for cobia,” he said. “You can put a lot of pressure on the fish because you know the hook isn’t going to pull. If it’s a big fish, and there’s not much structure around, we’ll take our time and use a lighter drag setting. You have to watch out for a cobia’s head shaking, which can break the line. If the drag is too tight, a head shake can break 100 pound test.”
Taylor doesn’t use live eels, but casts a 3- or 4-ounce Spro jig head with a 12-inch Gulp! Eel or a 6-inch PowerBait curlytail trailer. He said eel-like action and scent incite cobia to strike.
“The colors I like best are white and chartreuse,” he said. “But if the cobia are in a feeding mood, any color will get the job done. If it looks like an eel, they are going to eat it.”
DESTINATION INFORMATION
WHERE/WHEN TO GO — Morehead City is on US 70, a major east-west thoroughfare across North Carolina. Popular public boating access areas are on US 70 behind the N.C. Division of Marine Fisheries headquarters and Crystal Coast Visitors Center, and on Towne Creek in Beaufort. The best times to sight-fish for cobia are May and June when the water temperature reaches 65 degrees.
BEST LURES/TECHNIQUES — For sight fishing, big bucktail jigs in bright colors such as red and orange are the best bets. Adding a big, soft-plastic eel, Fluke, curlytail or rippletail trailer can increase strikes. Live eels and menhaden fished on jigs, Carolina rigs and light lines also work well.
FISHING INFO/GUIDES — Capt. George Beckwith, Down East Guide Service, 252-671-3474; Capt. Mike Taylor, Taylor-Made Charters, 252-725-2623. See also GUIDES & CHARTERS in Classifieds.
ACCOMMODATIONS — Hampton Inn, Morehead CIty, 252-240-3100; Holiday Inn Express, Morehead City, 252-247-5001; Sheraton Atlantic Beach, 252-240-1155, Windjammer Inn, Atlantic Beach, 252-247-7123, AmeriSuites, Atlantic Beach. 252-247-5118.
MAPS — Capt. Segull’s Nautical Charts, 888-473-4855, http://www.captainsegullcharts.com/; Grease Chart, 800-326-3567, http://www.greasechart.com/; Maps Unique, 910-458-9923, www.mapsunique.com.
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