Cowboy Cody – Whay Moore Fun

That’s just the way we do it. I had so much fun today with Scott, Bubba, and his son Cody. The waters were mean today. All the sites we looked at said one to two feet. I think they meant meters. It was much like a riding bronking bull. Cody was a champ all day and got to reel in some nice fish. He knew before us that we had one on and jumped into action as soon as he could get to the rod.

We headed out at first light and headed to 63A. As we went on, we kept seeing boat after boat heading south, but every bird in the air was heading north. I think the fleet thought they would be at either R62 or the cut channel. We decided we weren’t fishing for fishermen, but fish and the birds are much better fishers than anyone I know, so we followed the birds.

Yes, we saw the birds in great numbers right where we were heading, and they were feeding. The only boat near us was a charter captain who looked to have left the dock late, so he ran into them as soon as we did. Mayhem is the best way to describe the action. Every rod we had was down and screaming. I told Scott we had about 30 minutes tops before the fleet showed up, which was an understatement. Soon, were 50 boats all around, so Scott could do nothing but drive. With the sea conditions, keeping the boat in line and the bait on the bottom was no easy feat.

We landed a bunch of 23-inch fish and one 27. We left a slot open so we could keep fishing and catching about the same size fish repeatedly. All of the fish were as fat as pigs and cleanly caught. We kept putting them back.

It took a while, but that set of birds settled down. We had Bubba on board; if you know him, he has the best eyesight on this side of the Mississippi. He saw many birds on the other side of the channel just north of the NNK reef. We headed over there and also caught a bunch.

We put our last fish in the boat because it was just too rough to have a lot of fun, and there was a container ship in the distance. Had we stayed longer, we would have had to wait another hour before crossing.

I get it, the big ones always get away but we had two that broke a 50# leader. Would have been nice to get those guys in the boat.

It’s a great way to end an excellent fishing season for me. I am always excited to be with such a good father and son as Bubba and Cody. You can tell Cody has good parents when you talk to someone who is very well-mannered and can talk to you like he wants to be a part of the conversation.