Is It True Cobia Travel In Pairs?

Even Cowboy wanted to get a look at this catch.

It was another afternoon of some fast fishing right outside of our canal into the middle of the Callosahatche river on the Fort Myers side. The boat was anchored, four lines were let out, and it started to rain. I decided to sit inside the cabin to avoid the rain and have a sandwich. I installed a rear view mirror over my front windshield awhile back to check for other boats. While engaged in the sandwich I looked in the rear view mirror and saw one of the poles bending over.

I rushed out of the cabin, grabbed the pole, loosened the drag so I would not break the line and realized I had a nice sized fish on it. I was standing in the middle of the boat by the open cabin door. As I was retrieving the line I thought of my landing net, because of the weight on the line, and felt I needed it. But it was in the rear of the boat out of reach.

As I brought the fish to the surface, trying to move to the back of the boat was impossible. I decided to grab hold of the stainless leader as I raised the pole up. While I was doing this I saw that I had a Cobia hooked and was exceeding happy. Unbelievable as it may sound I lost the fish, not because the line broke, but because the weight of the fish was to heavy for the hook I used. It just straightened out and came out of the fish's mouth.

I went home tired, wet and disappointed. The following weekend I went out alone again to the same location using the same bait and lines. This time I had my four foot wide net with me that had a long handle on it. After a period of time as you might have suspected, a pole bent over and I was right there to set the hook and start winding him in -- with the net right there at the back seat. As I was hauling him up to the surface at about the front of the boat I noticed a smaller fish that I mistook for a small black tip shark. I realized that I had a chance of landing the two of them and placed the net in the water deep enough not to disturb the second fish.

When the first fish was in front of me I tilted the net straight down into the water and swung the net handle into the on coming fish. I was elated with the results and started to lift the handle of the net out of the water to bring it in over the gunnel. Much to my surprise the weight of the two fish was too much for the net handle to hold, so I reached over the gunnel, and lifted the net up with two hands, much as you would lift up a basket of fruit.

Success at last! The second fish was not a shark, but was a smaller Cobia, which was delicious eating as I had caught them in the past. When I arrived home and tied up the boat my next door neighbor came running over to see what I had caught. When I told him I caught both of them with one hook he ran to get a camera to record my catch. And when he came back he stated that the Cobia always travel in pairs!