Sometimes called “brown bomber,” cobia prowl the flats off Key West in winter, often betrayed by cormorants. The behavior is occasionally seen in other parts of Florida.
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Winter mornings, cobia forage along the rocks and guts of channel bottoms north of Key West. As the sun climbs, the shark-like brown fish move to the channel edges bordering the flats and wait for stingrays. When the rays swing up from the depths with their broad triangular wings, the cobia follow. Across clear, warm shallows, cobia chase crustaceans and baitfish the rays nose up out of the marl and sand bottom, as cormorants dive from the surface after the same prey.
The scene plays near Key West like a traveling circus act of the animal kingdom, with clumsy cormorants and determined cobia ganging up on the hard-working, harassed rays. It only happens a few weeks every winter though, while packs of cobia reside in the Lower Gulf before their spring migration north. With bad timing, anglers can miss it completely, but tracking the rays and cormorants to feeding cobia might be the sportiest pursuit on Lower Keys flats all winter.
“I’m sure if those rays had a gun they’d shoot the cormorants,” Phil Thompson says, “and probably the cobia, too.”
But the rays can only lead the cobia to us, as long as we have the smarts to figure out the pattern that brings the cobia to the flats in the first place. It’s not as easy as it sounds.
Phil found them the last Monday of January, and he and a few friends, all guides, went out on a busman’s holiday the next day and had a blast—eight cobia hooked, five boated, four released, all on fly. One guy would spot a ray mudding, go up and shut down his boat, and call the others if the ray held cobia. About a quarter of the rays were holding fish. Thompson and his friends had to pole to follow the ray with the wind, or else hold the boat off the ray if the wind blew them too close. When they hooked one, they followed the fight to the finish. Then they would find another mud and begin again.
“We had good size cobia, about 25 pounds,” Phil said. “Not the really big ones that we know are around, but good size.
Watching a cobia sprint across shallow bottom is a new experience.
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“You don’t have to worry too much about spooking a cobia. It’s actually hard to get them off the ray,” he continued. “We made at least 10 casts to the ones we had out here before we hooked one of them. That’s why it’s great for a beginner fly caster. First, because he can see the ray, and the cobia often, too, and second, because he has a lot more time than with a permit, which will spook at the slightest move.”
That day, Phil actually broke off a cobia on fly that went right back to the ray. Then Phil cast to him again and the same cobia took the fly, and this time, Phil landed him. “They’re not shy,” Phil said. “I don’t know any other fish that will do that, twice in a row on fly.”
All that had been on a waning quarter moon and a high tide about 3 p.m, when the action got hot. The following day, another friend had five again, all on fly.
Phil and I made it out the next day. We were on the turtlegrass flats slightly north of Key West known as the Sea Plane Basin and Pearl Basin. At 9 a.m. the water temperature was 68 degrees.
“It will be about 72-74 degrees by 2 p.m.,” Phil says, “and slightly higher by the time the tide comes off this flat.”
Small jig sweetened with shrimp won’t spook cobia.
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We couldn’t confirm it until after a few more trips, but that water temperature near 72 degrees turned out to be the single most important factor in drawing the cobia up on the flats. Otherwise, we had a low tide at 11:30 a.m. and a 4-5:00 p.m. high tide, depending on place. The low was a moderate low, what Phil called a “hump tide,” for its subtle rise, much less than a spike. For bait we had shrimp-tipped jigs, live crabs and flies on 9-weight rods. We looked forward to holding by the cobia and sight-casting to them on the clear, 3-foot-deep flats. For fly patterns, use just about anything, Phil says. The action you give the fly is more important than the pattern.
“We had a hard time hooking up until we teased them into biting. You had to take it away and give it again. Use something bright and large that gets down a few feet quickly, like a big shrimp pattern with an epoxy head,” Phil said.
The key to finding cobia in the Keys.
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Up ahead, higher on the flat, we saw an expanse of clouded water, a mullet mud, Phil said, “something you see a lot more of now than you used to, thanks to the net ban. There are pilchards in there, too.”
On the flats, you need sharp eyes to read the water. Polarized glasses help, of course, but the best way I’ve ever heard to explain how to see well came from Phil. You let your eyes see the pattern of the flats scenery, and look for anything that breaks that pattern. Any break in the pattern will likely be movement, something alive that you shouldn’t miss.
The cormorants showed us the rays, since the rays weren’t mudding. Those birds kept on the rays and tipped us off almost every time to an unseen ray. Rays feed on these flats all year, and sometimes permit follow them, but so far this day, they just weren’t mudding, and they had no cobia following. Also, Phil pointed out, the cormorants were skittish, flying all over the place, another indication that the rays weren’t seriously feeding. The cormorants stick fast to feeding rays.
We needed faster moving water for success. To feed, the rays want strong current for a few reasons. First of all, tidal flow loosens tiny creatures from their hiding spots, but also rays must be moving themselves to stir up the shrimp and creatures off the bottom, which
will invariably stir up the marl, sand and coral bottom and cloud the water around the ray while it noses. Like permit, they want a clear view of potential predators, so they’ll always work into a current which quickly carries away the muddy water. If they’re working in still water, it will cloud up around them and they’ll feel like they might get ambushed by a big bull shark. Also, they’ll work against the moving tide, because that will bring the scent of their prey to them in the first place.
On the other hand, Phil pointed out, too strong a tide might present other problems. It might be the case that when more water floods and rushes off the flats more quickly, the fish get skittish of being stranded in a low point when that tide turns so dramatically. They might be hesitant to get up on the flats in the first place. That theory at least applies to the behavior of permit and bonefish, Phil said. The measure of a big tide is how far above, or below, the mean low tide the water level will be. Phil checked his GPS tide chart to find that we still didn’t have much of a tide at the moment, which we could see by the unwavering turtlegrass blades below our boat.
We didn’t see any activity at all before we quit at 1:30. We figured that the prime time would be when a high tide coincided with the afternoon sun to warm the flats and bring the rays searching for food.
In the coming week, we faced new moon astronomical high tides. It might be the story that a moderate high tide, which Thompson and his friends had that day that they did so well, might be the best conditions of all. By the time the next moderate tides came around, two weeks later, the cobia might be gone, off the flats, if temps warmed too much. Given all the variable conditions and our work schedules, we figured we might go after them again next Monday, or Friday, or both days, if necessary.
One week later at the docks Phil signaled to me eagerly with waving arms to get over to him and get going. “The word’s out,” he said. “We’ve got to get there before the other guys do if we’re going to get a position on them,” he said.
A nice little home away from home.
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We went to Sea Plane Basin, and then Pearl Basin along the Northwest Channel, and found none. Then we went back to Sea Plane Basin. The cobia had appeared the previous days under these conditions, more or less—warming water, the incoming tide ahead. If it was going to happen for us today, it was going to happen now. We were in four feet of water, a vast expanse of acres of clear water, all beautiful marl bottom, turtlegrass, sponges, and fishless.
A cold front approached us from the north; the air temperature had already dropped from the a.m., clouds moved in, and the water hadn’t really started moving, at all. “They may be higher on this flat,” Phil said. “It’s not a strong moving tide at all, and we may be out of luck because of that. I’m afraid that we’re screwed,” he said. “Yes, we’ve had it.” We quit as a cold front rolled over us.
Getting a good view is always a plus–good balance is essential!
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In the next couple weeks, Phil went out after them twice more, and came up empty all but once, late in the morning, no matter the tide. Even if the rays had been there mudding for food, the cobia weren’t with them in the a.m. The decisive factor that brought the cobia onto the flats had to be water temperature, he’d decided. He still knew that the rays needed moving water to feed, but only in the late afternoons, when the water temperature reached about 72 degrees for a few hours, would the cobia be with them. Sure enough, following that hunch, he came across another cobia on a Saturday afternoon, and we planned a trip for the next Monday.
By now it was almost March, and the sun shot significantly higher in the sky each day, and warmed the flats quickly. Cobia schools would remain in the deeper waters of the Gulf until sometime in May, when all but a few residents swam north. We were coming to the end of the run, which we figured lasted from Christmas until April 1 at the latest, and I wanted to get one. I didn’t want the opportunity to slip away.
Phil rode us out onto the wide open world of the flats, where, he says, no matter what’s going on, or going wrong in his life, he can at least forget about it for a few hours a day. It’s a great backyard to have, I said, and not a bad way to spend a late February afternoon. We had an incoming tide, and good weather.
We pulled up and saw the rays mudding. Phil cut the engine and poled us over to one. He jumped down from the platform and cast, but no cobia were on it. He saw another cormorant across the flat and knew by its behavior that it chased a ray, and we motored there.
“The rays actually respond to the engine sound,” he said. “They’ll turn to it and even follow it a bit. Who knows what they’re thinking.”
We came up, too quick, right on top of a big cobia piggybacking a ray. They both scooted away from us, and Phil turned in search of them again. We found them a hundred yards away. This time, Phil angled the boat in such a way that the wind would push us up the flat. He cast to the ray. He led the ray and kept the jig out of the grass and brought it across the ray’s back. No take. He changed from shrimp on a jig to a live crab on a circle hook.
That cobia shot out after the crab, mouthed it, and let it go. The next cast, the fish hit it with force, took it on a run, and Phil set the hook. The fight began, up and down the flat, and around the boat, for minutes, as we drifted in perfect silence, punctuated only by our happy voices.
“Look how fast he came off that ray. When they’re with those rays, they want to eat. I’ve caught them on everything, crabs, flies, pinfish, pilchards, but a jig with a piece of shrimp is the best. Next best is a barracuda tube lure. A crab’s not too bad either, obviously. But the whole key is switching baits. Try baits that stay in different levels of the water,” he said.
Phil landed the cobia gently, dehooked him, and let it go. Finally, we were there and so were they, and we turned to look for another.
The prize in hand at last–a flats-prowling cobia.
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Plenty of good-size cobia come up to these flats, and plenty of undersize fish. Phil has caught a 50-pounder, and heard of a few even slightly larger, but fish over 60 pounds seem to stay in the deeper water of the Gulf.
“Whatever you’re using for bait though, don’t give up on that cobia. On the 21st cast, he might take that bait. Stay a little ways from the ray, and keep on the fish. Tease them. You can’t hope for a better fish on fly than cobia on the flats.”
By the end of the day, we’d hooked three more, and landed a couple good fish. Sometimes the harder a thing is to learn, the sweeter it is to know it.
We headed home, and on the ride to the docks, Phil said, “Now, in the spring, you’ll get big mutton snapper coming up on these same flats…”
FS
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