Flounder Tourney turned Cobia Mission

Went to capt meeting at Dare Marina for Flounder Bowl Fishing Tournament and from the wind that was present friday night I just knew it was going to be one rough wet ride across to the other side of the bay early in the morning. Stewwed on that thought for a few and finally conceded to trailering to Kiptopeake.

Smart move as it was calm on that side at first light. Just outside of the ramp are a bunch of ships from World War 2 that are made of..... wait for it....... CONCRETE!  Yes you heard right, they are completely concrete. They now server as a breakwater for the Kiptopeake State Park.

 Sorry, side stracked on history for a minute but the theory of concrete vessels is fascinating to me.

 So we jigged around the concrete ships with squid strips and Gulp grubs. This produced a few fish.... 3 flounderwith one keeper at 18 inches and a couple oyster toads. After feeling like we covered the area thoroughly, we ran to high rise and joined the 80 other boats out there for the Flounder Bowl. Couple oyster toads in 4 to 5 ft seas later we said to hell with it and tried some drifts in more sheltered water. No more flat fish despite trying until about 11:30....

Decided it was time to pull a rabbit out the hat and reached in the cooler and pulled out a bag of eels I snuck in there when no one was looking. crews eyes lit up and were instantly on board with some sight fishing. Did eliptical circles all the way from the high rise to the BMORE channel. despite being rough and trying to sling eels into the wind we managed to catch 2 keepers, 1 dink, and pulled a hook on a nailer. Had a few more attempts but we were having to flank around the fish to avoid pitching an eel into the wind and back in the boat from the tower. all in all we saw 15 and turned a disappointing flounder day into a fun cobia day.

Saturday Fishin' Mission

Saturday was the make-up day for the flounder tournament but with not too many flat fish making an appearance we decided to go after more spades and see what we could make happen. Arrived at York Spit Light at about 6:30am to try and beat the rest of the boats out.. IT WORKED! After resetting the anchor a handful of times, we finally got set up with the stern of the boat perfectly facing the lighthouse platform and got the bag of clam chum tied on the back of the boat. Unfortunately I managed to get the mesh clam bag mixed up with the prop in the process. bag shredded and all the fish attractant gone, we started to fish. Not 15 minutes later we already all had caught some spades and they were swimming circles just off the back of the boat.  other boats started showing up and eveyone had a good old time.

 After catching over 50 spades and running out of clam we decided to go looking for cobia as the sun was up, not a cloud in the sky, and it was looking fishy. Proceeded to cover alot of ground from york River channel to the concrete ships off Eastern Shore. on our way back home i spotted a NICE 50+ lb cobia  and pitched it a live eel. He immediately wolfed it down and it was game on. I handed the rod down to Ashley and she got him all the way to the side of the boat but in the hectic moment she had gotten the line around a rod holder and it broke off. Saw 10 cobia all day from 24 inches to some larger fish around 50 inches. Got to see alot of sea turtles and stingrays as well. Lost a nice fish but still had a great day on the water with some friends.