Capt. Robert Earl McDaniel was doing the cobia two-step, a ritual similar to that of a rain dance, on the back deck of his boat that was anchored in 8 feet of water about 10 miles south of Mississippi’s Gulf Coast.
“Native Americans have their dances, and I have mine — and this one is to call up a big, fat cobia,” said McDaniel, of Whipasnapa Charters in Biloxi. “We got a nice chum slick running with the current down this long bar, and we just need a cobia to find it.
“Just one, or maybe two. I’m not selfish; I don’t need but a couple of bites, and the chances are good that they will be brutes.”
McDaniel, who is known for his ability to find and catch giant sow red snapper, might be even better at chumming up spawning cobia — aka lemonfish or ling — as they migrate along the northern Gulf of Mexico.
His boat and tactics produced the state-record cobia, a 106-pound, 13-ounce chunk caught in 1996 by his brother Randy McDaniel during a local cobia tournament.
“Every year in the spring, I start tracking the migration by checking the fishing reports over in Florida,” the captain said. “They show up in Destin first, then move west off Pensacola and we’re next. About two to three weeks after they start catching them in Destin, they’ll start showing up here.
“It’s tied in to the vernal equinox — the first day of spring, when the moon starts pulling currents north, bringing waters up from the Florida Keys. Usually, the equinox is when we start hearing about them reaching Destin, and about two weeks later we start seeing them here. Right after we start seeing the hardheads (catfish) show up, the cobias come in. You see pecan trees start blooming, cobia are coming.”
A native of Grenada, about 250 miles north of the Gulf Coast, McDaniel puts it in a perspective many Mississippi fishermen already know.
“When you see the dogwoods bloom and the crappie spawning up in the North Mississippi reservoirs, the cobia will be here pretty soon,” he said.
This annual migration of cobia, one of two in the Gulf (the other is from Mexico past Texas to the west side of the Mississippi River), brings the big fish here to procreate. McDaniel said the fish like water temperatures of 68 or 69 degrees before they get in the mood for love.
“They come here to spawn on our sandbars off the barrier islands,” said McDaniel, who has noticed a slight change in the fish’s behavior over the past decade. “Used to be, they’d like water anywhere from 7 to 10 feet, but after Katrina it seems like they are a little deeper, like 10 to 15 feet.”
Nearly 20 years after his brother broke the record, chumming for cobia remains McDaniel’s passion.
“I still love doing that,” he said on March 1. “It is still a passion, so much so that I’ve already got the fever and can hardly wait. I’ve changed a little bit in where I go now, heading more south of Chandeleur, even though I still go to my old spots around Horn Island.
“One reason why I’m keyed up so much for the coming season is that I had such a good year last year on the bars. We caught a lot of fish, and a lot of good fish. I’ve got that fresh on my mind.”
The big difference between what the Florida fishermen do and the way McDaniel and other Mississippi Coast anglers fish for cobia is that in Florida’s clear waters, most of the fish are spotted from the high bridges of boats and then chased down.
In Mississippi’s typically dirty water that is rarely possible.
“We chum,” McDaniel said. “We anchor up on a long (underwater sandbar) and we start a chum line working. I’ve got my freezer already filled with pogies that I caught last fall. I like to use the small pogies in my chum churn because they are oiler than the bigger, meatier ones.
“I go every fall in the bay and net as many as I can, and freeze them to use the next spring. Saves me money and it saves me time and it brings fish to the boat.”
After anchoring and putting his chum to work, McDaniel uses a variety of lines to work on the cobia.
“I use live baits for cobia, obviously, and that includes hardhead catfish that we usually fish between six and eight at a time on the bottom,” he said. “The big sharks and redfish tend to leave the hardheads be, so we use the hardheads so we don’t spend so much time on them.
“But we catch most of our cobia on either live eels or live croakers fished closer to the boat on the surface. We free float some and we use some under balloons.”
McDaniel means business, especially in tournaments.
“We use some heavy gear to get the cobia,” he said. “I like a 6/0 reel, 80-pound-test mono and either 100- or 130-pound mono leaders. I don’t worry about using fluorocarbon leader that much because with live bait they usually don’t care. They’re going to eat it.”
McDaniel changes a few things for charter trips.
“I use the same gear, but then we don’t do anything to hinder the bite from sharks or redfish,” he said. “It’s hard to make a cobia bar trip for a charter because you’re only looking at a one-, two- or three-bite trip. My customers are just as happy to be reeling in a bull redfish or a 100-pound shark.
“We catch a lot of those bar fishing, if we want to, and it can be fun.”
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