It's been a while since I sat down and typed but I plead busy, lots of fishin' and even a little sleep deprivation. Snapper season opened with the usual expectations and they were met very easily. The fish are here, they're hungry and lots of good size ones. You just have to know some spots that weren't camped out on every day the first week of the season. The great news is the Black snapper have shown up as well. A bit early for 'em but all my usual spots that hold them are packin. Not near as easy to catch as a red, blacks are a little smarter, will "pick" a bait off your hook and pull a little harder. Especially when they average around 8-10# The cobia run is in full swing. It started out a little slow but the past 10 days have been great. There are a lot of big fish around as well as plenty of "regulars" in the 30-40# range. As always there are LOTS of "horror" stories about pulled hooks and broke tackle on Big fish. capt Nick Patzig on the "Big Red" had everything come together a couple days ago and landed a 118# flathead. The same day one of my anglers pulled the hooks on two different big fish- thats how they got big. Luckily we had a couple others in the 40#'s that didn't come unbuttoned. The "perfect" trip is leave early, catch a limit of snappers, a couple groupers and then hit the beach to catch a few cobias. It's a wonderfull plan and it's been coming together quite well of late. Just remember that you can't do it all in a 4 hour trip. If your willing to put in the time you can have a box full with quite the mixture this time of year. A pair of my regulars and I went this week on a 7 hour. We hit the reefs and got a limit of red snappers, 6 black snappers and 4 (nice!) black grouper. Came in to the beach and found 7 cobia, had 4 eat and kept 2 for the box. Now thats a rack of fish! Todays forcast has a small craft advisory with 20-25 knot winds from the NW so I'm going to get caught up on ALL this stuff I've been neglecting- I may even cut tthe grass. capt Larry Pentel