So you want to catch a cobia

Cobia are a very interesting fish. They don’t behave like bluefish, striped bass, croaker or trout. They behave like cobia, and that can drive an angler nuts.

At times they will attack a bait or lure as if they are starving; at other times, they ignore everything you throw at them. I have seen one go after a banana, and a friend of mine saw one try to eat a chicken bone. I tossed the banana overboard after a fellow outdoors writer brought it on my boat. My friend was eating lunch while anchored up and chumming for cobia.

There are several techniques for catching cobia, and I have tried most of them.  

If you travel down to Virginia, you will see small boats with high towers that look like they may tip over at any minute. The captain will run the boat from the tower looking for cobia as his party stays below with rods in hand waiting for instructions as to where to cast their bucktails, live spot or eels. Once a cobia is spotted, the cast or casts are made, and then it’s up to the cobia. He will either eat the offering or not. If he decides to eat it, the fight is on. If not, the anglers will continue to throw everything in the boat at the fish until he either eats something or swims to the bottom.

Then there is buoy hopping. This is done in the ocean or bay. You run your boat from buoy to buoy hoping to find a cobia holding on one or the other. When you find one, you toss whatever you have – live bait, bucktail or even a fly – to the fish and hope for the best.

While I was running charters out of Virginia Beach, I tried all of these techniques and concluded that anchoring up on the edge of a shoal and chumming was the most efficient way to catch a cobia. Running charters is supposed to be a business, and the amount of fuel used in trying to find cobia on the surface hurt the bottom line. I would run from Lynnhaven Inlet to the 12-Mile Marker on the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel, then down the shoal about a mile from the bridge and anchor up.

Once the anchor rode came tight, I would set out my 5-gallon bucket with a chum mixture of dry cat food and bunker oil. I drilled a series of 1-inch holes in the bucket so the chum had a way to enter the water.

Then I put out two lines baited with cut bunker or live eels. The live eels were better than the bunker because they didn’t seem to attract the cow-nosed rays like the bunker did. One line was set on the bottom with a fish-finder rig, while the other was on the surface. Both carried 8/0 circle hooks on 80-pound mono leader.

I usually left the dock at 6 a.m. and fished until 3 p.m. I kept a couple of rods rigged for bottom fishing, and my party could fish for croaker, trout, sea mullet (kings) or whatever was around until one of the cobia rods went off. While I did not catch a cobia on every trip, I had one on more trips than not.

I believe this system would work here as well as it did in Virginia. You’d have to find a spot to anchor up where other folks are not drift fishing. That pretty much eliminates the reef sites.

There is Reef Site 9 in the ocean just offshore from Delaware Seashore State Park. I have fished there and it does not seem to attract much attention. Other than that, look for any shoal with a contour line and anchor there.

If you find a concentration of bunker, try drifting with the schools while chumming. If you can snag or cast net some live bunker for bait, that will improve your odds.

When it comes to landing a cobia, do not use a gaff. While cobia do not have nasty teeth, they do have sharp fins across their back and a tail that can hit you like a sledgehammer. You will need a big net that can hold a big fish.

The idea is to wrap the cobia up in the net, then bring him aboard the boat. Then you must take a measurement to be sure the fish is at least 37 inches. Once you catch a legal-size cobia, that’s it for the day. You are only allowed one cobia per day per boat.

Of course, if you catch one cobia, that’s big enough to feed the whole family.