Weird Local Fish - Cobia Edition

Though not an uncommon catch to our south, this cobia caught from Magnolia Pier in Long Beach on Long Island certainly turned some heads. Glen Hoyer caught this fish after Irene moved through, on a peanut bunker fished on the bottom.

This is not the first cobia I’ve heard of caught in the Northeast, however. Every year anglers seem to run into a few off South Jersey. The fish are usually found milling around some of the large bell or weather buoy located off the coast, but one fish I heard of turned up around a school of bunker. The angler, who was fishing for brown sharks at the time, very nearly caught the fish, which was considerably larger than the recent Long Island catch.  A few years ago, I read about another cobia caught by Captain Al Ristori in the Raritan Bay while weakfishing.

Cobia are pretty interesting fish. They spend a lot of their time cruising right on the surface where they are commonly mistaken for sharks because of their large pectoral fins. There are mostly loners, though fish will congregate in productive feeding areas such as reefs, wrecks or around large floating objects. They are aggressive predators, and share the striped bass’ fondness of bucktail jigs and live eels. Their closest relative in the fish world is the remora or shark sucker. They are found in tropical and subtropical waters worldwide, but along the East Coast of the U.S., cobia are abundant from the Chesapeake Bay south to the Florida Keys.

If anyone catches any “strange” fish right here in the Northeast, send in the picture and the report and I’ll post it right here on FOTJ.