Virginia Beach Fishing Report, Great day of Hatteras offshore fishing

Yesterday we had Paul Conley and his son Seth aboard for the day. Paul has been chasing a cobia forever and was down to try his luck at catching one. Evidently he is the black sheep of cobia fishing because any time he gets near, cobias run the other direction. He has chartered me and several other operations a number of times and never had any luck with cobias. Yesterday was no exception. Conditions were completely wrong for cobia fishing so we opted to go offshore instead. It was a rough ride out in very choppy seas, but we started out over the edge in 200 fathoms of 82 degree water at the 180 line. We didnt see anything in the deep so we worked back in towards the change. Once we found the change, the water stayed blue and dropped from 82 to 80 then 80 to 76. We found scattered grass and lots of flyers in the area of the change where it went from 80 to 76. At the 175 in 60 fathoms, we found our first bite of the day. I looked down and saw BRIGHT BRIGHT blue and figured it was a dolphin and didnt really pay much attention as our mate for the day, Brian, made his way to the rod and began feeding the fish. I started clearing a couple lines and doing my routine and about 2 minutes into the fight, I look back and see a small white marlin all lit up going the other direction away from the boat. So we frantically clear lines and throw the boat in reverse and Dr. Paul makes short work of the frisky little white. The white marlin fell for a small ballyhoo behind a blue and white squidnation minichugger on the shortrigger beside a pink squid chain teaser. Dr. Paul likes light tackle fishing and he caught his first white marlin on a tld 15 and 12# test. Good start to the day. We continued to work up the line and a bunch of boat were balled up at the 230 rocks working over the pup blackfins pretty hard. Dr. Paul and Seth didnt really have much interest in catching small tunas and wanted some gaffers, so I continued working north up to around the 280 where we found a bunch of grass pushing in towards the change. Very pretty conditions for dolphin fishing in this area. Lots of big grass with trash in it, flyers, birds picking on the water, and plenty of dolphin. Dolphin could be seen everywhere cruising around and chasing schools of flyers. Seth would catch his first ever dolphin here. We found several schools of small "flip flop" dolphin or "micro minis" but they were difficult to bail and a tad on the small side so we opted to continue trolling and working the weeds with ballyhoo and were rewarded with two dozen decent sized slinger and gaffer sized dolphin. We worked the area for a long time in the weedline, but the current was pushing it north too fast to stick around, so we worked out of the area and ran home in pretty conditions with calm seas. Dr. Paul and Seth were happy with their day and we did have a great day offshore, but Dr. Paul's no cobia curse continues.