New sport fish?
 

My gf works at the ocean science lab at ucsb and always has some interesting newsletters to share, so I thought I would pass the interesting article along.

http://www.news.ucsb.edu/2016/016467...2018%2C%202016

Also, ill be fishing goleta beach on saturday and arco island sunday if anyone is interested to join.

It would be great to be able to catch Cobia in our local waters


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This one will have to be added as a apecies that qualifies for WCW

Cobia recipes? Guys on the east coast love 'em.

Wow. This is really interesting. The speed they traveled so far by my crude math would mean we could see them possibly summer of 2017? Plenty of time to research cobia fishing techniques :D

Invasive species... I will be sure to assist in the eradication efforts

Nice!! Might be just a summer time species if they do make it up this way.


http://inshore.lagooner.com/cobia.php



Fishing the Cobia Migration
Each year cobia migrate up and down our beaches during spring and fall as the water temperatures change during each season. During the spring cobia migrate northward as the water temperatures rise and south as the water temperatures fall accordingly. What's the right water temperature, you might ask? The experts all agree that water temps need to be at least 68 °F with 72°F being the temperature that will get them to move onward. So the "rule of thumb" being that cobia will move northward in the spring as the water approaches 68°F and continue northward as it starts to exceed 72°F. During the migration in the spring a temperature gauge is a critical fishermen's tool for spring running cobia.

I've caught a bunch of cobia in my day, only one off the kayak, but they are fighters, and very tasty on the table. They are in the same family as remoras and still have the habit of following large animals, in Florida you can catch them by finding large manta rays ; sometimes a big ray will have 4-10 30+lb fish escorting them. They love live bait, we mostly used menhaden, or cigar minnows, but I am sure some macks, or dines will do the trick! In the winter they love to hang around reefs and oil rigs and you can get them on big bucktail jigs. While I would hate to see them invade our waters and push out native fish, I don't think that they would ever become too invasive, they don't really school, and they have a pretty varied diet. It would be great to catch them in while helping to fix a ecological problem!

I've watched some video of spearfishermen in Florida shooting cobia basically right off the back of 12' bullsharks, which definitely takes some stones.



Don't they stay pretty far off shore in the Atlantic? If that's the case, getting to them without a boat might be a chore...in the event that they ever end up swimming our waters, of course.

Or apparently they swim around in 3' of water, according to that second link. I stand corrected.

It would be a thrill to catch a local cobia. Who knows if they can reproduce in the eastern pacific. Our water might be a bit cold fot them some years. Cobia are an in shore fish. I lived on the outer banks of North Carolina for a year. Cobia were occasionally caught in the surf and many ate caught from piers. Mike

heck ya ...haven't caught any since my florida days...fun to catch ,great to eat ,easy to target IMHO...

Seasonal migration all the way from Gulf of Mexico to Massachusetts during summer.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobia

Miami to Massachusetts is about 1,500 miles.
Panama to San Diego is about 3,000 miles.
.... just thinking

How to catch, plus nice set of 57 photos to flip through at the bottom:
http://www.floridasportsman.com/sportfish/cobia/

Yep.

Ceteris paribus, 15 months.

Get the grill ready.

Looks tasty:

http://www.nordicgroupusa.com/img/im...vacobia_s1.jpg

.... paired with an ice cold beer in a beautiful location

http://trvlsmrt.com/wp-content/uploa...ch-300x197.jpg

[QUOTE=Mr. NiceGuy;254144]Seasonal migration all the way from Gulf of Mexico to Massachusetts during summer.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobia

Miami to Massachusetts is about 1,500 miles.
Panama to San Diego is about 3,000 miles.
.... just thinking
They are very very rarely caught north of new jersey. I did hear about one caught off cape cod last year though. It said tens of thousands so I would think if there is suitable spawning habitat, we could see them in a couple years regularly. It will be very interesting to see if they have any impact on our fisheries.