Virginia Beach Fishing Report, Virginia Beach Inshore COBIAS BARRACUDA SPANISH

On Friday we had an afternoon halfday charter. They wanted to catch some sharks but the conditions didnt really allow for it. It was a little too windy and the bait hasnt really been concentrated enough the last couple of days to fish for sharks. We did have good conditions to catch cobias though. We have been seeing and catching cobias all week and this trip proved to be no different. We tried to catch the cobias for about 2 hours of the trip. In that time we saw 7. We saw a group of three small ones and hooked two of those. We saw a pair of bigger ones and caught one 45#er. We saw another pair that went away when we casted at them. These were all free swimming fish that we found sightcasting. Then we went and looked at a couple buoys. There wasnt much to see on the buoys, except one of the buoys had about a 40# barracuda on it. The cuda was difficult to get a bite from, but I remembered a couple things from past experiences with cudas and we had him hooked up a short time later. This fish was really fast. It made a huge long run, then charged at the boat and jumped ten feet in the air over the back corner of the boat. Awesome fight. We got the fish subdued and the fish was let go. I suppose we could have gotten a picture of the fish but barracudas are pretty useless as far as food quality and I would have had to kill the fish for a photo so letting it go was the best option. A short time later we saw a big school of red drum that went deep before we could get a cast in. We trolled after that and found very good mackerel fishing. We have been very lucky with the size and amount of mackerel we have aorund this year. All in all this was another very good half day of fishing, and aside from the cuda, the fishing was about par with hows its been all season for us. Very good inshore fishing.