Getting a good view is always a plus--good balance is essential!

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.

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