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| The biggest Cobia I've ever landed... what a fight!!! |
On the 12th of September, Kings, Bryan and I headed towards open water in the Southern Islands to do some Garoupa fishing. When we reached the first spot, Bryan was quick to land a Garoupa around 2kg on his second drop. I had just missed a bite too.
This spot was famous for big Garoupas so we had our drags tightened, just in case a big garoupa decided to head into the rocks. With my specially rigged bait, I felt a light pull on my flexi rod. Anticipating a bigger pull, I lowered my rod tip and then I felt the line go really taut before I struck and put a full U bend on my rod. The fish would not budge. Instead, with my drag almost locked, the fish took line!
I could not believe what I was feeling, or seeing, for that matter. I thought I had hooked into a giant garoupa once again. Without wanting to let the fish enter the snags, I just increased the pressure on the fish, confident in my setup of 40 pound line and solid Twinpower. It was just brute strength against brute strength, and for the first 15 minutes, I was fighting a losing battle, with the fish just taking more line out of my spool, making some powerful runs in between. All the while I was putting full pressure on the fish, still thinking it was a giant garoupa. My biggest worry was that the fish would cut me off on the rocks.
Then I started to be able to gain some line, and I knew that we had reached the stalemate stage of the fight. When I got a meter of line in, the fish would take a meter out. Sometimes when I got 5 meters of line in (my line had markings to indicate every meter), the fish would take it back out. It was an improvement though. At least I was not losing more line than I gained. By this time, I was resting my rod on my knee and using it as a fulcrum, pressing down on the rod grip to lift the rod tip up, and cranking the reel half a turn at a time.
Finally, I thought the fish was starting to give up as I saw a colour change in my line, and by this time, knowing that the fish was way off the bottom, I loosened the drag a little, just in case. It was the right move, on hindsight, because that was when the fish started going on powerful long runs, and I started wondering if I had even hooked a garoupa at all. This fish definitely did not fight like a garoupa, which by now would have floated to the surface with an inflated swim bladder.
In the end, we finally caught a glimpse of the fish and none of us could believe what we were seeing, a gigantic Cobia was cruising with my hook in its mouth. It eyeballed us, then went for broke on his final long run, taking back almost 20 meters of line. I recognised this as the end stage and asked Bryan to get the gaff ready. I slowly pumped the tired fish to boatside, Bryan got the gaff in, and we both struggled to raise the fish into the boat. Success!
Exhausted, with arms and back cramped, I lay on the boat and rested for a full half hour before regaining some strength to take a few pics and then rested some more. After that, I continued fishing and somehow the Garoupas still kept biting my rig, and we landed a total of 5 big garoupas on top of the Giant Cobia, which we could not properly weigh because my Boga grip only weighed fish up to 15 kg. This fish maxed out the Boga grip so I had to weigh it at home while standing on my own electronic weighing scale. Our estimate was 16kg, but it turned out to be a neat 19 kilograms. No wonder I had such a hard time trying to lift the fish for a pic. What a day!!
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| You know it's a good fishing day when you can take a picture like this even after Kingsley had collected his share of the catch and rushed off for a meeting. My orange ice box can help gauge the size of these fish. |
Sadly, Kings only took a video at the end of the fight, haha.
Oh yeah, we did catch other good stuff in September.
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| On 9th September, Joey, Fau and Ismail came along and we finished our bait early with these good fish. |
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| 11th September was also good, and Luke had a taste of big garoupa. |
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| Bryan loves September Garoupas too. |
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| And don't forget Ubin, where we landed some nice garoupas, barramundis and snappers. |
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| Ren Meng made her Ubin debut with a Barramundi. |
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| And here's thanks to Danny who did not hesitate to jump into the water when my prop got tangled in some rope. Thanks buddy. 27 Sep 2014. |
