this was one of the best trips i have been on in a long time.... before i started offshore kayak fishing, i was running to the oil rigs in my blazer bay 2170 bay boat... i got to know the offshore world pretty well.... i never was real comfortable offshore in a motor boat... the thought of the engine going out and me drifting to cuba was always on my mind... oddly enough it was taking kayaks offshore that made me feel much more comfortable... i knew if i could paddle a mile out to a spot, i could paddle back! anyway, several the guys off of the tkf (texas kayak fishermen) site joined up and meet at the bob hall pier in corpus christy texas... we decided to hit the oil rig that is about 1 1/2 miles from the beach... it was an easy 25min. paddle... we all found a spot surrounding the oil rig, anchored our yaks out and began to fish... everyone was in a different kayak... they all seemed to work well in these glassy conditions... i was in my wilderness systems tarpon 16, we had an ocean kayak prowler 13 and a ocean kayak scupper... i think a couple of the guys had ocean kayak capers!
one of the corpus locals ask if he could come with us.... we said sure... he had been cast netting all morning before we launched... he had a bucket full of live mullet and large shad... when we got to the rig he offered me a couple of live mullet .... i jumped all over it... i put my 8'' live mullet on a allstar 20lb class spinning rig... i had a slip cork set at 15' deep... in no time the rod went off! screaming! i had no idea what was on the other end but i knew it was big! after a 10 min fight i landed a nice jack crevalle... great fighter but not much on the table fair... i let him go and began to search the rig for more bait...
i got out my sabiki jig and started to jig the base of the rig... i managed a big skip jack... i cut the laddy fishing into 4 or so sections and gave everyone some.... in no time my bud james was yelling "fish on"... i ran up to him to film and he had a nice cobia to fight... we got him in but we were not done on the cobia! james brother jessie caught a small shark, another guy caught a red snapper and some spade fish... not long after that and jessie started yelling "fish on"... i ran over to him with my camera rolling and asked what it was? jessie said he had no idea... some of the guys began to chase the fish in the kayaks... at one point he came to the surface about 75yards out from jessie... one of the guys yelled "cobia"... it was a monster.... jessie fought it for 1/2 an hour... we all got out our spear gaffs to stick this fish... when we got him in the yak we got out the ruler... he went 4 1/2 ' long and some where in the neighborhood of 60lbs! great day on the gulf of mexico... check out the full 30milesOUT episode above...
ty (host/producer 30milesOUT fish'n TV)
www.30milesOUT.com
