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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