Seasons change but the fishing remains bountiful

As summer winds down, anglers face an interesting dilemma. With so many fish species currently available, which do you target? I posed this question to Brody, the amazing fish-finding and stock-trading dog. He replied, all of them.  

 

On Saturday, that is exactly what we set out to do. My brother (Dave) and son (Elliott) joined Brody and me for our “all species” fishing trip. The tide was just beginning to fall when we launched the Yellowfin. After a short run, I positioned the boat to drift by a creek that was draining over an oyster bar. Elliott cast a Z-Man Finesse TRD on a 1/5-ounce NedLockZ jig to the oyster bar and hooked a small trout. Dave did the same and picked up a redfish. We tried a few more creek drains hoping to complete the inshore slam with a flounder, but it was not to be.  

 

With a couple of inshore species checked off our list, we turned our attention to nearshore species. King mackerel and cobia became the new targets. Nearshore conditions were a bit sloppy, but the Yellowfin made quick work of the 27-mile run to the Y73 reef. Upon arrival, we dropped 80-gram Shimano vertical jigs to the bottom and began jigging. I hooked a small barracuda that was eaten by a much bigger barracuda. For the next 30 minutes pretty much everything we hooked was eaten by a shark or barracuda. While we did manage to sneak a large amberjack and small king mackerel through the gauntlet of toothy predators, we decided to leave the reef and try a live-bottom ledge about a mile away.  When I stopped the boat over the ledge, a school of cobia came up to investigate. Elliott quickly grabbed a jigging rod and cast the lure near the cobia. A cobia immediately ate it. Elliott fought the fish with maximum pressure wanting to keep the fight short and avoid toothy predators. Thankfully, he managed to get the fish into the boat. The cobia was well over the minimum-size limit, so we invited it home for dinner. Before heading home, we caught and released a few more cobia and some red snapper.  

 

Back at the dock, we were cleaning the boat. Another boat stopped. I expected them to ask what we caught, and I was already reaching for the cobia. Then they asked to speak with Brody who was fast asleep on the dock. They thanked him for the U.S. Concrete/Infrastructure Bill trade. Brody nodded and went back to sleep. That dog is amazing at finding fish and trading stocks, but he is awful at helping to clean the boat!

 

Contact Captain Greg Peralta at captgregp@gmail.com or call 843-224-0099.