CATCHING COBIA: FIRST, LOCATE SOME RAYS : HOOKING LONG, BROAD FISH REQUIRES THE RIGHT BAIT AND A SHARP EYE.

Byline: Steve Waters South Florida Sun-Sentinel 

Whether one hopes to hook cobia on fly rods or spinning tackle, making bait is the first part of the equation. So Richard Stanczyk was understandably optimistic after his brother spotted a large school of pilchards soon after leaving the dock.

``We have to have live bait,'' Stanczyk had said the night before. Our party was to be at his brother's boat, Catch-22, by 6:45 a.m. ``We need to get out there early, before the other charter boats.''

After the baitwell was packed with pilchards taken by throw nets, he was beaming.

The next stop during the late February outing was a patch reef. The boat's mate rigged two spinning rods with small hooks and small chunks of bait. The weighted lines were dropped to the bottom, where the baits were pounced on by grunts. Putting a dozen of the feisty panfish in the baitwell was the second step in the live-baiting strategy the Stanczyks employ for cobia.

Step 3 was finding rays. Cobia are caught throughout Florida, from the Panhandle down to the Keys and up the Atlantic coast, and they frequently follow rays, eating the various goodies kicked up by the bottom dwellers.

The crew soon realized the patch reef they settled on actually was a 300-pound ray barely moving along the bottom in 20 feet of water. Behind it was a school of more than a dozen cobia.

The importance of all our bait quickly became apparent. The mate scrambled down from the tower into the cockpit and tossed a handful of live pilchards behind the boat to get the attention of the cobia. Another handful followed and the cobia rose to the surface to gobble up the morsels. A grunt was hooked onto a spinning outfit, cast into the midst of the school and rapidly reeled back to the boat. Whereas the pilchards got the cobia interested, the sight of the fleeing baitfish drove them insane. When mate Marc Ellis cast the grunt again, it was all he could do to keep the crazed cobia from hammering the bait.

Then it was time for the main attraction in our party, Joan Wulff, to take over. An internationally acclaimed fly-fishing instructor and the widow of fly-angling guru Lee Wulff, she gracefully delivered a streamer-fly pattern from a 10-weight rod and was hooked up after several casts.

``Cobia are not a real particular fish,'' Stanczyk said. ``When they're aggressive, they'll eat any kind of fly. But you need a fly big enough to get their attention and with a strong hook, because you need a lot of pressure to land them.''

Wulff found the experience a ``wonderful'' alternative to the blackfin tuna in the 25- to 50-pound range she was told to expect earlier in the week. But the tuna were nowhere to be found.

``The cobia don't jump (when hooked), but they thrash around, run and dive down about 10 feet,'' the first lady of American fly-fishing said recently from her home in Lew Beach, N.Y.

Since she had never caught a cobia or even seen Rachycentron canadum apart from a mounted specimen, the fight really became a way to unravel ``the mystery of what a cobia was going to look like. They almost look like sharks; they are not beautiful but are delicious eating.''

With its dark-chocolate back, lighter sides flagged by stripes of brown and silver or bronze and white, and a long, broad, depressed head, the cobia is found around the globe in tropical and warm, temperate waters both inshore and offshore. A schooling species alternatively called lemonfish, black salmon, black kingfish and sergeant fish, it prefers to congregate near buoys, pilings, wrecks, anchored boats and flotsam. Much like the young Lakers swingman with the similar name, cobia are known for their spirited runs. The all-tackle record for cobia is 135 pounds, 9 ounces, hooked in Australia in 1985; the heaviest taken fly-fishing was an 83-1/4-pounder in Key West in 1986.

After two more took the bait - a triple hook-up for the fly-anglers - the cobia grew tired of the imitations.

The fish were still interested in eating grunt, however. Before long Judy Muller - a correspondent for ABC News who befriended Wulff at her fly-fishing school in the Catskill Mountains of New York - was battling a 40-pound cobia fooled with a grunt on 20-pound spinning tackle. Soon Vin Sparano, editor emeritus of Outdoor Life magazine, also was warring with a stubborn cobia.

While the fish were fought, the deckhand tossed more pilchards to keep the rest of the school of cobia around, then gaffed two fly-caught fish and another two taken on spin gear.

By then, even a frisky grunt could not excite the remaining cobia, so Scott Stanczyk headed out in search of new challenges, which included barracuda on fly for Wulff and Muller and a sailfish doubleheader on spinning tackle.

Outdoors Editor Brett Pauly contributed to this article.

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PHOTO (Color) Catch-22 mate Marc Ellis gaffs a 40-pound cobia for Judy Muller as the fishing rod of Vin Sparano is bent over on a beefy specimen.

South Florida Sun-Sentinel