Sorry I haven't put a report up in a while. Been recovering from hand surgery, so have ho'ed with Fish Dad a couple of times, didn't really want to be the "captain" until the hand felt right. Anyway, the time felt right for the first cobe trip this year.
We headed out real early (4 am) and hit the HRBT to catch some live bait. Put some croakers, spot and a pigfish in the livewell and headed to Messick point to get some live-eels from Poquoson fishing center (they open at 4:30 am!). Got there and didn't notice a piece of rub rail missing from the floating dock with nails sticking out--deep gash in the gelcoat (*&%$!)--beware if you're headed out that way.
Made it out to Bluefish rock and only 2 other boats in the vicinity. Found a nice spot where it went from about 24 ft. to 16 ft and decided to anchor up. Chum bucket on the bottom, chum bag on top, dripping menhaden juice and chunked fresh menhaden. Put out four lines--eel on bottom, live croaker, eel free swimming, and fesh bunker down near the chum bucket. Before long, the blues got so thick, you could see dozens flashing in the chum slick and didn't take them long to start devouring our eels. We fished for about 6 hours without a cobia run. Saw one hookup by the boat next to us and a nice cobia rose between his boat and ours, but it spit the hook after a two minute fight. We decided to head in before the predicted storms with a bunch of flounder bait for the next trip and no love from Mr. Brownsuit. I guess there's always next time...