Not Just Another Fish Story


Reprinted from various Daily Press Town Square sections (Hampton, Newport News, York-Poquoson, Gloucester) from September 20, 2012

Like many of us, it takes a lot to get Dawn Martin up at four AM. As she says, “it’s not something I do often or willingly.”

But after getting married ten years ago, her husband Anthony decided to introduce his new wife to some of the activities he enjoyed while growing up next to the Chesapeake Bay in Seaford. One of his favorite pastimes was fishing. While Dawn had fished before, it wasn’t part of her regular regimen as a youngster in Richmond. Since he wanted to own a boat and live on the water, the couple buried stakes and settled in Poquoson.

As years passed, the Team Martin fishing entourage grew to include their two children. For Dawn, their shared experiences with a rod and reel were classified as family outings which involved traveling short distances to places where spot and croaker were easy to snag.

Recently, Anthony took his hobby to the next level and asked Dawn to join a real fishing team – the one that he entered into the Chesapeake Bay Cobia tournament, held at White House Cove Marina in Poquoson on August 11. While the event required a 4 AM wake up call, Martin, who ended up winning the women’s division for catching the largest cobia, was quite excited.

The story behind her catching the winning prize was more than your typical fish story.

There are two ways to catch a cobia. The first is chumming, when the fisherman drops a combination of ground up fish and fish oil into the water in the hope that it will melt into a chum slick and entice the cobia to bite on the slick or one of the live eels left dangling. The drawback is that it can also attract sharks. Four hours into the competition, the team, which included friends Shane Zasmowich and Trent Casey, had caught two sharks, but no cobia.

On to plan B.

Sight casting has become a more popular method for making the big catch. According to Martin, this can be evidenced by the growing number of boats sporting towers to view for fish. This takes the guesswork out of the process, and when a potential catch is sighted, bait is thrown on a line in front of the fish, with the hope that it will be taken. Martin added that “cobia often hang out near buoys so many boats will circle buoys and throw out live eels or spot hoping a cobia is lurking about.  Otherwise cobia hunters will kind of cruise around looking for the fish swimming around.  In some cases there will be a fin sticking out of the water but not all the time.  Polarized glasses help.”

Martin and her crewmates chose their coordinates, settling their boat in an unnamed spot (as she states, a fisherman never reveals his secrets). However, because of the cloudy conditions that day, they could not see the cobia until they were close to the boat and too close for casting. They did catch one cobia, but it was 35.5 inches long, just a 1/2 shy of the minimum to keep.

Morning turned into afternoon and the bleakness of the sky was overshadowed by the doom and gloom of the crew as their allotted time neared its 5 PM deadline.

With time winding down, the foursome decided to throw a “Hail Mary” cast, moving to a site where the Martins had caught a large cobia on a previous trip.

At 4:15, the anglers cast their line and eel and immediately hooked up with a cobia. Says Martin, “(it) was just that quick. We went from having not had any luck for 12 hours to hooking a fish in minutes. Suffice it to say, it was quite a mood changer!”

After a five minute battle to get the 45 inch, 23.5 pound fish (average size, according to Martin) into the boat, the crew high-tailed it to shore with 35 minutes remaining, making it to the marina in three minutes, leaving ample time to weigh the catch.

For her efforts, Martin won a $100 prize, and of course, her fish.


  


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