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Almost Broke The State Record w/ Capt Rich of MR Charters Last Night

Despite the full moon, Capt Rich Koszytu and his buddy, Steve, and I decided to run out for a quick "look around" overnighter aboard Capt. Rich's boat named "Michelle Ann." We knew we had a nice weather window from Wed night into Thurs morning, so we decided to poke around some near shore spots to try to find some pelagics.

When we headed out Wed. night; we were greeted with a beautifully moonlit & flat calm ocean upon our exit from SRI. With such nice conditions, Rich practically flew us out to a couple of bottom contour areas he mentioned that he wanted to check out.

When we pulled up on the first "spot", there wasn't a light from a boat within a few miles. Better yet, we found nice clean, warm water with some decent bait and fish marks on the electronics. We decided to drift and chunk sardines in this area while trying to catch some live squid to add to our bait arsenal.

The squid prooved finicky at first, but eventualy Rich managed to coax a couple of them close enough to the boat for me to scoop them with a dip net. We put out a mix of circle-hooked sardines and the live squids both flatlined up top as well as down in the water column.

We fished for a few hours with nothing except for a few squid when around 1 am, it happened! The deep live squid got slammed on the end of the rod right next to me just as I was preparing to enjoy an ice, cold Yuengling. I grabbed the rod, passed off my beer, and I quickly went to work on what I could immediately tell was a large and powerful fish.

When I finally got the fish near the surface, we were initially disappointed that it appeared to be a 6-7' long brown shark. We started discussing possibly cutting it off to avoid a long, protracted battle. However, when I looked behind the "shark", I could see a ~40-50# cobia following along behind it.

I tried to bring the "shark" close to the boat while the others tried to hook the following free swimming cobia on a jig. We were unsucessful in getting the free swimmer to bite; and eventually, my fish ran under the boat.

I moved to the other side to clear the line, and I fought the fish to the surface for a 2nd time where it breached on top for just a split second. As it breached, the hydroglow light we had deployed on the opposite side of the boat, fully illuminated the fish to reveal that it was not a shark ... IT WAS A HUGE COBIA!!! .... with a smaller cobia following it. Capt. Rich shouted "that's no shark ... IT'S A MONSTER COBIA!"

At that point, the adrenaline and energy level went into overdrive as Capt. Rich grabbed his gaff. On his first shot, the gaff ripped out of the gills. The fish ran leaving a plume of blood trailing out of it, and I had to bring it back to the boat for another shot.

On the next try, Capt. Rich planted the hook deep into the dinosaur's throat' it took the 3 of us together to slide the behemoth up over the gunnels. We looked like we were pulling in a "markah" on TV.

The fish had already bent the gaff hook, so once on the deck, Capt. Rich quickly introduced the beast to his "Fishy Be Good Bat" to finally get it subdued. We immediately started wildly celebrating with fist bumps, photos, and high fives as we knew that our trip had just become a HUGE success.

As the realization of just how big this fish truly was sunk in, we realized that we may have just landed the new state record cobia as we could tell this fish was definitely over 70 lbs., & none of us knew the state record weight for cobia.

On our way back in this morning, we learned that the state record cobia was an 87-pounder that was caught off of Sea Bright back in 1999. We knew my fish was every bit of 75 lbs., so we decided to weigh it at a certified scale to be sure of its weight.

We took the fish 1st to Fishermen's Den in Belmar where it tipped the scales at 82 lbs. With the fish being within 5 lbs. of the state record, we decided to run it down to Hoffman's in Brielle to get a certified scale weight(just to be sure.) Once again at Hoffman's, the fish stretched the needle to the 82-pound mark. Only 5 lbs. off the current state record, but I am guessing it is in the top 5 cobia ever taken in this state.

We may not have broken the state record, but we definitely caught one hell of a big fish & we had a great time doing it! Filleting that thing back at the dock was more like butchering a deer than filleting a fish; instead of a world record citation, we ended up getting an amazing amount of awesome "lemon fish" flesh to divide among us.

Thanks again to Capt. Rich for putting me on such a great fish, and I hope we can get out again real soon to try those super secret, special cobia rigs again real soon.

I am sure Capt. Rich will post more details including the tackle/gear used and much better photos. I was so excited that I just had to get these out there to share right away.

- Gr8ful

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