EP 41: Throwback Episode - Targeting Cobia with Capt. Joey Leggio

Captain Joey Leggio shares his expertise on targeting Cobia off the coast of New York, revealing how this once-rare trophy fish has become a viable target species. We explore effective techniques for finding and catching these powerful gamefish, along with the shifting fisheries that have brought them north.

• When sharks appear (especially blacktips and spinners), Cobia are likely following close behind
• Position downwind of bunker schools rather than casting directly into them
• Use a "knocker rig" with light weight and fluorocarbon leader instead of heavy snag hooks
• Keep the first hooked Cobia in the water to attract followers, just like with mahi
• Always have multiple rods ready with both live/chunk baits and artificials like bucktails or eel imitations
• Cobia season typically runs from June through early September in New York waters
• Climate change appears to be shifting fisheries northward, bringing southern species like Cobia to NY
• Capitalize quickly when Cobia appear – opportunities may be brief
• Look for Cobia following cow nose rays and large bunker schools
• If a snagged bunker dies or spins unnaturally, replace it immediately for better results

If you'd like to support Captain Leggio during his recovery from a recent prop strike accident, please consider contributing to the GoFundMe linked in the show notes.

https://gofund.me/86614fd5

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Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction and Captain Leggio Update
• 10:11 Meeting Captain Joey and His YouTube Channel
• 18:05 Finding and Targeting Cobia
• 36:12 Cobia Tackle and Fishing Techniques
• 43:19 When and Where to Find Cobia
• 53:43 Climate Change and Shifting Fisheries
• 1:04:09 Blackfish and Bottom Fishing Strategies
• 1:14:28 Kayak Fishing and Sheepshead Tips

Transcript

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 0:00

Hey, fat Dad Nation. It is time for a throwback episode. This one is Targeting Cobia with Captain Joey Leggio, who was a guest on this show originally in September 12th 2022. We're going to talk about Targeting Cobia off of the coast of New York. One quick note Captain Leggio is currently recovering right now from a prop strike where he went overboard was struck by the prop. He's recovering right now. There is a GoFundMe linked in this podcast, so if you can jump in there, throw a couple dollars towards him. It's going to be a long recovery and obviously he's not able to be on the water working right now, so help him and his family out. We're hoping to have Captain Leggio back on the show very soon. So here we go.

Joey Leggio: 0:44

You have to capitalize on it. You might get that one chance to get it. Have those rods ready, have your chunk baits ready, have lures ready, because 90% of that time there's a follower or multiple followers.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 1:01

Hello, welcome to the Fat Dad Fishing Show live stream and podcast. My name is Rich Natoli. I am the regular host of this show and today we are being joined by co-host Ed Gobo, owner of Captain Hank's Tackle. Ed, how you doing? I'm doing good, man Doing good, excellent, excellent. You know it's funny. I never scripted it out, but I seem to say the exact same thing for every podcast and live stream. It's kind of made itself into its own thing here.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 1:33

I'm really excited about this one and we're going to jump into it in a couple of minutes. We're going to do our normal stuff before we bring our guest on, but we have Captain Joey Leggio on and we're going to talk about Cobia and his quest for figuring out this new fishery up in New York. And we know about new fisheries down here. We have Cobia down here in New Jersey. The guys south of us are like, yeah, cobia, they're all over fishing the Chesapeake and that area. But something different for us up here in the northern areas. And you know, we just had Captain Halkius on a few weeks ago and he was saying you can't catch Kobe up there or they're not worth targeting. Well, au contraire, my friend, we have Captain Joey coming on and he's working his way through it and he's figuring it out, so we're going to talk about that. Forget about everything else that we would normally talk about. I'm too excited, so we're going to bring him on. Let me just remove this review and bring on captain joey hey guys, how you doing.

Joey Leggio: 2:35

I'm good, how are you?

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 2:36

guys doing well. Welcome and thank you for coming on. I want to point out to everybody that, uh, you are a captain, but but right now we want to talk about your youtube channel. So if you guys aren't following fishing long island, you definitely want to and that's where you're going to see. You know we're going to talk about the cobia, but you're going to see the cobia over on that channel there's a couple on there.

Joey Leggio: 2:57

Yes, there is yeah, they're.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 2:59

They're nice. There are some nice fish, so I've been spending some, some extra time over there lately. So if you're not subscribed over there I think a lot of people are, but if you're not subscribed over there, go over and check it out. It is going to be well worth your time and you're also not going to see captain joey out there on a floating unicorn inflatable floating around.

Joey Leggio: 3:20

I did see that video, though I know exactly which video you're talking.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 3:23

Yeah, yeah, I was looking through. You know I look through every once in a while for ideas on what to do. And yeah, you look up popular fishing videos. See if there's a topic that maybe you can tackle in a different way yeah and it's like there literally was a guy fishing in a toilet.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 3:38

I'm like, okay, fishing in a sewer. The guys there's multiple people on inflatable unicorns pretending that they're being dragged forever. You know, I caught this marlin and was dragged 40 miles offshore. Well, no, because you were actually already 40 miles offshore when you hooked it right, and then you just floated around for a while being followed by your camera crew well that boat.

Joey Leggio: 4:01

He's like oh, look at this guy out here, what is he doing?

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 4:03

I remember clearly yeah, I'm like what the hell are you doing out?

Joey Leggio: 4:05

here he goes. Hey, I cooked this, barley, and it took me yeah, I totally remember, exactly, exactly.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 4:10

Yeah, you don't remember what I'm doing out here. I just jumped off your boat two minutes ago.

Joey Leggio: 4:14

Yeah, so all the cameras yeah it's amazing over youtube, like how these people just really making careers out of it, you know, and guys are really capitalizing on it a lot. You know which I was, but you know, just to me it's a hobby right now yeah, well, and I, I, I look at it like look I I think I would like to do more with it, but I'm not going to do the clickbait.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 4:35

And there are some big, big name youtube fishermen that have a lot of people that follow them and they've gone to pure clickbait and I've actually stopped subscribing to them and they've gone to pure clickbait and I've actually stopped subscribing to them and they've even done videos. I'm sorry, I'm doing clickbait, well, okay, well, so now, but now every video is clickbait, so I won't, I won't take a look at it, but yours is not like that at all and I appreciate that and I think the viewers and listeners here would as well, so everybody go check it out.

Joey Leggio: 5:04

It is what it is. There's no clickbaits, there's no take twos, it's straight. And even when I edit the video, it goes from clip one to clip 10, and I just stitch them together. I never really went to school on how to edit, it was just something I took up as a little hobby, had some fun doing it and I enjoy it a lot. It's a lot of fun. I don't have much time, especially with the two little guys running around, but sometimes I'll just sit where I am right now in this spot in my kitchen table and just start doing it. My wife comes down at 2 o'clock in the morning. She's like what the hell are you doing? I'm sorry, I get caught up, and it's fun, though it's cool to put it on and look for the PNG files and stuff like that, because I don't know how to Photoshop, I don't know how to take the backgrounds out, so other people have done it already. You could just share it and use that stuff.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 5:56

Right, which is pretty cool. It makes the videos look nicer. Yeah, I actually use Canva to remove the backgrounds and everything like that.

Joey Leggio: 6:03

Oh, we'll have to talk about that tomorrow. I don't have a camera because I like to use it.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 6:06

Yeah, well, we can share some tips on that. I've gotten good at finding things that will help me to cut the corners quickly, because I'm not into graphic design, I am not a video editor, I can just edit videos and you know I do my best.

Joey Leggio: 6:19

It is what it is. It's definitely fun. It is fun.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 6:23

I've got Ed telling me you know what would make your stuff better and he's given me some things and it sounds good, but it's harder, after making all the videos that I've made, it's harder to implement than you would think. You know you get used to doing it one way and you know. Anyway, I guess this is for people that have YouTube channels. Let's get back to the fishing. Let's talk about your fishing up there, fishing Long Island. Why don't you give everybody just kind of like an overview of what your typical fishing season looks like up there, what you're targeting and how you're approaching?

Joey Leggio: 6:56

it, sorry. Well, basically we're starting off with. We used to start off with flounder, but like who catches flounders anymore? It's such a rarity to catch them and we used to have a great fishery. We would head over basically to raritan bay anywhere over there. Corneal and flats was a great spot, but that fishery has completely died. Then they gave us blackfish and you know, starting april 1st.

Joey Leggio: 7:16

Another thing it's kind of tough, the water's still cold, but we get out there, we'll catch a couple fish, we get some codfish and then from there it's the striped bass and then from there everything starts opening the fluke and everything. And that's how it was. And we noticed that the striped bass fishery started slowing down by us. Like the Raritan Bay area, they're crushing it over there. They're literally crushing it All through the summer. They catch them, but for me that's a hike for me to go there. I'm not going and taking my little 20-degree-foot skiff all the way over there. It's probably going to some waters that could be a little dangerous at times that tide turns. You've got winds. You're going through Ambrose Channel. Hey, buddy, this is Frank. Come inside real quick and we've got to go.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 7:51

Hey, buddy, thank you. Kids are always welcome. Kids and dogs are always welcome on screen.

Joey Leggio: 7:58

My wife would love that. She loves dogs. So you know, I stay basically local, my inlets between Jones, debs I'll shoot out to, maybe to Rockaway, but that's basically my limitations. So then we noticed that the stripers by me weren't as good. Now, whether it was different patterns they were taking, maybe they were offshore. I heard of some fish were being caught in Hudson Canyon, which is like crazy to hear striped bears out there.

Joey Leggio: 8:21

You know, every year people are going further and like like wow, you got to go into the federal waters to even catch these things, which you're not supposed to. You know so, but that was dying off. Then, all of a sudden, we start getting all these crazy sharks now and they're doing these crazy blitz. You look up like holy cow, what the hell's going on there? You just see white water and you have thousands of black tip spinners, hammerheads, you know pop, gray whites I've seen, and then, following them, now comes the cobia. So once you start seeing those sharks, those fish, those cobia right there on their tail and I now find myself just trying to target them and it's like an addiction, it's.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 8:56

It's crazy and it's like you can't stop well, you know they're there, right? So I have this crazy addiction for hunting for redfish in new jersey. So I know they're there, but I haven't caught them, which makes it even more difficult. So so you at least have a crazy addiction that's based in some kind of truth and reality, whereas I'm out there chasing redfish. I was out with ed last week and I think he was looking at me at the end of the day like dude, just reel in. Let's just get back to the launch. Let's just get the hell out of here that was a long time.

Joey Leggio: 9:27

You might catch. You know you might look.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 9:29

There was a tarpon that was put right right, exactly, I know they're around, you know, and I'm obsessed with trying to find them and trying to figure it out. And ed was with me and it was a long day and he just I could tell he just wanted to go. I'm like you can leave if you want. He's like no, it's fine, poor guy, but you're, but you're having some success.

Joey Leggio: 9:49

So how was your first year when and I want to take everyone through like the whole process- your first year when you decided look, I'm gonna go out and try to catch some cobia off in new york well, it's been two years now since these fish have been coming here and I was saying before, like we were talking, you know, we've always had them here but it was like such a trophy if you caught one, you know, and it was like, wow, this guy just caught a kobe, a 20 pounder, 30 pounder. It was a major trophy. There wasn't a lot caught last year it was. A good amount of fish came in last year. I didn't catch any landed. I had two hooked. Like I was saying, had one on a lure I lost right away. And then we had my buddy had one on a bunker which he lost. Those are the only two this year. I changed it up and talked to my couple of my friends how they were doing things differently. Like my buddy, anthony, he catches a lot of them. Actually his name is the Cobia King now.

Joey Leggio: 10:33

And he's out there doing it. He's out there every day and you know he said I'm sneaking up on him, I'm not going. I was going to the one side of the school and the wind would push me through it and I was getting sharks after shark after shark and it's frustrating because they destroy your gear. You got to retire. I was doing all all bright knots. So it's a pain in the ass to do an all bright knot with fluoro Right On the boat. You're losing snag after snag. It's like just taking $6 and throw them in the water every two seconds, cause the sharks will kill me. So I'm like what the hell am I doing wrong? How am I not catching these? Why am I just getting these sharks? So I said, all right, I'm gonna take what Anthony said and I'm gonna try it. So this year I changed it up a little. So what I did is that you don't want to be downwind of anything except when you're trying to catch cobia. So what we do is what he was saying go up to the school. Now I I noticed these fish, that they don't seem to get frightened, but there's some reason why they're biting when you're not destroying the schools up. So what I did is I would come up, I'd see which way the wind's blowing, try to see which way these schools are swimming, and come up on the back side of them. Now another thing I did is I watch a lot of videos where cobia's are Virginia, florida, like what are they doing? How are they catching these fish? And I've always noticed, whether it's stingrays, tiger, sharks, whatever these fish are following, they're always on the tail end when they're following them. So it kind of made sense. So I go up and I don't cast into the school, I go as far as I can. I don't care if I'm a hundred feet past the school, I'm nowhere near them. There's no splash, there's nothing that's going to frighten the fish if they're on that particular school. So we start reeling in, reeling in. You start feeling bang, bang. You start feeling him hitting the line. I'll snag one Now that bait is on the end, but I'm not. I'm on the opposite end. I might have a line out and the bait starts drifting through, drifting through, drifting through. I visually saw it with my own eyes when I hooked one. They know when that bait is injured instantly. I came up and the fish swam to me on one particular day and I see a cobia pop. I'm like holy cow and they excite you so much and I still go crazy like it was my first one when I see, right, so holy shit, there's a cobia. So I'm on the other end of the school, I snag a bunker. The second I snag this bunker, I sweaty this fish like honed in on and zoom, shot to it and boom I it on and I ended up losing the fish right next to the boat too. I was like holy cow, like how did he know that that fish was injured? So you know, and it was so far away, it was literally on the other side of this bunker spool. So they definitely they know that.

Joey Leggio: 12:55

Also, my tackle, I do try different pounds. I go like a 40-pound test fluoro a, a 50 and a 60. I haven't gone over 60. I was trying to do mostly 60 because of the sharks, right, but sometimes I'm using 40. But I've always been using the fluoro too. I like the fluoro. It's stronger, it's more, you know, abrasive resistance and stuff you know for it now let me ask you, kobe, they're migratory, right?

Ed Gobbo: 13:21

so what is? What is the process of actually finding them? Like you know? Does somebody just say, oh they're here, like they'll go out and see them one day, or like these, because I've seen like boats down south. They have these giant towers on them and they're like searching the water. I mean, you don't have a giant tower on your boat, correct? No, I don't have a giant tower at all I don't get specific, but get you know just the idea of how you think they're on the the tails of the sharks.

Joey Leggio: 13:46

I think once you get those black tips and spinners up here, I think they're right there with them. You know we get a lot of the cow nose rays. They're on the tails of the cow nose too. You'll see them sometimes. You see those big, huge schools of cow nose. You'll see some cobia's following them too. Not on everyone, but you know, you try to look.

Joey Leggio: 14:00

You know, like I tried structure this year. I tried something different to see, you know, and we shot out offshore to see some of the structure that was out there and say, oh, maybe it'll be there. We were casting bunkers. We didn't get touched. But you know what? It's an experiment and if I would have scored it would have been a hero that day, it would have been great. But listen, you don't know until you try it. Take what these and let's mimic it up here, because we do have the fish now coming up here. Now we've got to try to get them.

Joey Leggio: 14:25

One of the things we were talking about is that, instead of using the bunkers getting the sharks, why not get blue claw crabs? Go to night before, catch a bunch of blue claw crabs and maybe you won't get the sharks. At that point Maybe you will just target the cobia. I didn't do that this year, but next year. That's something now I'm going to implement and try it and see if that will help me out a little too. So you're always thinking, always trying to change your game. And one of the things about fishing and I don't care what anybody says you're never going to stop learning. So any of these guys that pat themselves on the back, that know everything, they're just foolish, because it's always changing and you always got to change your game to learn new things. Yeah, there's always a hundred methods that'll work.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 15:00

I love when people get in arguments. Yeah, you know, I love when people get in arguments. Well, that's not how you do it Really, because I know this other guy who's really successful doing it that way.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 15:11

Exactly Just because you don't do it that way, there are a lot of things that I don't do that are really successful for other people that aren't successful for me. So I think there is part of that where you want to, you want to try things out Right, and sometimes, yeah, and I think confidence goes into a lot of things. I know that there are things that I can't catch fish on different techniques and it's because I'm just not confident in myself and I think it kind of transfers through to that lure way too often.

Joey Leggio: 15:36

I definitely have to believe in it too, what you use, and you have to believe in your taggle. You know you have to feel confident, Like you're saying. You have to feel confident like you're saying. You have to believe in that lure.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 15:44

You know, yeah, there's certain top waters that everyone says, oh, just use this. I'm like I can't because I won't catch anything. Yeah, I have too much experience not catching on that. I know it's a great lure, I know it's a great top water, but it's not what I'm going to use. I'm going to use a spook junior, or I'm going to use a spook because that's what I'm good at and that's where I catch all my fish. So if they're hitting this other thing this well, I can put talking popper in there, but let's say, a pencil popper. I don't do well with those, and that's just my fault, I guess. But yeah, you got to try out different things. I fully agree with you. If you think you've learned it all, you need to just get over yourself and admit that you haven't Definitely, and just be ready to continue learning. Now, when you're going out there, though, you're looking for the schools of sharks rays, something like that.

Joey Leggio: 16:32

And the bunker.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 16:33

And the bunker. Well, yes, and the bunker. Now, how are you looking for them? Are you looking specifically for blitzes of either sharks or striped bass or something like that, or bluefish, or are you just looking mainly on your fish finder as you're heading out?

Joey Leggio: 16:49

Definitely look at the fish finders, but what I'm looking for is definitely I like to see the color. You'll see those purple hues a lot of times In the early mornings. A lot of times they're not up, they're right below the surface and it's hard on the angle of the sun. Obviously, the higher the sun is up, the better you're going to see the bait. But uh, if the fish are on them, they're definitely acting different. Those schools they're popping harder, they're swimming harder. They're up more in the surface. You'll see them. The sharks sometimes usually jump and the spinners are just free jump. You know, I'm sorry if I'm talking fast. I think that's a little island.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 17:13

I mean, I talk very nah go right ahead, man, all good but so that's one thing.

Joey Leggio: 17:20

going out of the inlet, you're basically looking for the bunker schools you know and you see, and then if you happen to find the sharks, yeah, they're going to be there too, they're together. But sometimes you'll have a bunker school that's all sharks and it's annoying and actually I'll talk about go back. I actually changed my tackle because of this Because, like I was saying before, I was sick and tired of losing $6 bunker snags, one after another. So what you do is, once you find them, snag a bunker. Let's say, give it a couple casts, three casts, four casts. If you're not getting anything or you're just getting sharks, go to another school and see what's there.

Joey Leggio: 17:50

Bounce around, don't just focus on that one school. I found this school. This is it. There's my cobia. They might not be on that school. You might find a school that might have tons of spinner sharks. So move around, don't be afraid to look and definitely don't jump on other people. If you see some guy like we're working our butts off trying to find these schools, if we find it, they just don't come on to somebody. It's like casting your baits over our lines because now there's definitely the kobe ain't going to be there, right, you got all the splashing and booming and snagging, but hell with this. I'm out of here, you know so yeah, I think it's interesting.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 18:24

In in the chat we have david cohen saying you know, using a drone to see the the schools of rays or sharks could be helpful I don't know, do you use a drone at?

Joey Leggio: 18:33

all we did and he lost it.

Joey Leggio: 18:35

It fell it crashed in the water. The battery died. He lost it, but we did it the first time. And, uh, you can look at his videos. It's raf, so we outdoors you can check out his videos. He will see three cobia swimming in the school. It's super cool. You can check that video out. And we caught them that day too. And now it's one of the days, like I was telling you that on that one trip that we had the drone up. I had one right away and the fish jumped up, shook its head off, you see it, and it shook the bait out of its mouth. So I lost it. Then my buddy, pete, hooks up and he's reeling it in. He's like Kobe Kobe and of course the craziness starts. I'm not going to lie, I'm like a little kid. So he's reeling it in. He's like Joey, joey. He goes holy shit. This follows, this follows. It was seven of them following, but I had to put music over it to get all the cursing out of it.

Joey Leggio: 19:24

But it looks like this instantly. So now Dave's rod is wrapping over Pete's rod. I'm like holy cow. So I'm trying to grab Dave's rod and he's fighting me over it. He doesn't realize. I'm just trying to help him to get them untangled, because everybody knows what happens with braid on braid. It's an instant. So long story short, they got the two on All of a sudden.

Joey Leggio: 19:44

I had my rod. I put it down because I went to get the gaff. That rod bends over now but that pops up. We lose that. So finally I see Pete gets up. I get his fish in the boat. We got the first one in.

Joey Leggio: 19:54

Dave now starts bringing his into the boat and Dave was actually very smart on this one. What he did is he didn't. He kept it away from the boat, which was very, very smart on his part, and he brought it in after we had the other fish gaffed. Well, guess what? When he brought that fish in, it was followers. Raph now cast the debate. He hooks up. So now, on that, we had four fish lost, one on my rod. Pete's got his on and dave has pieces, pieces in the boat. Dave's still fighting his fish and now raf is hooked up. So dave gets to the boat, I hook his fish. I mean, I get his fish get in the boat and then raf loses his fish right there, as that happens. So the whole point of that is that that's how you capitalize on them. Everybody was ready, everybody had baits. You saw the school come in with you know the one hook when they were all following him. You know that's how you're going to capitalize. So we basically could have like a limit right there, right, one fish that was hooked.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 20:49

And I think another good point is all of you were. Despite the craziness and the excitement, you, you, you respected the rule of followers in the school, and when you have followers, you keep a fish at least one of the fish that's hooked up in the water right, otherwise they go away. It's like mahi fishing exactly, exactly like that yeah and I. We had shared off air before that.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 21:11

I man, the best mahi I ever caught, I violated that you get excited, you do yeah, I got so excited and I I pulled it out of the water and the school left and and the one that I got was not even the big one, and it was a decent one. Man, I felt bad. I felt really bad, except for the fact that we were trying to run away from a thunderstorm, so we really needed to leave anyway.

Joey Leggio: 21:35

I don't know Life fish. I go with the fish.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 21:38

It's really hard to leave. You know, when you see what it was is. They were chasing flying fish and we could see the flying fish skipping and you know, we stopped and we're thinking it was tuna and we were out tuna fishing. We're just running back in to get away from the storm and next thing, you know, you see, you know, you see the neon lights underneath you and you're like, well, that's mahi once you see the neon colors.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 22:00

So we just took a whole big thing of butterfish and just threw it out all around the boat and they all came right at the boat and I hooked one up. But as soon as I pulled it out they literally just bolted yeah and I felt bad. But it's the same principle with Cobia. Absolutely when you have the followers, yep 100%, and also the rig.

Joey Leggio: 22:18

I was talking about how I changed my rig. I used to use just like you would snag for stripers, have a, you know, treble hook. Well, now you can't do that anymore anyway, but you have your standard. Just don't go snag treble hook weighted and we would snag them. And a lot of guys are catching the Kobe's that way. So I just said you know what, I'm changing it up.

Joey Leggio: 22:34

Number one I didn't like it because it's got a lot of weight. I think it's a plain treble hook and you know what a knocker rig is. You have the egg sinker on it on top. So I get a small quarter ounce, nothing more than a half ounce, anything between like a quarter or a half ounce weight. Put it on there and I'm going four feet. I'll be the 40, 50 or 60 fluoro. And now I'm using a swivel for two reasons it gives you something to grab to hold on to in case you do have sharks all right, it's a lot quicker to tie if you know you have the sharks, instead of having to start doing albrights on the boat.

Joey Leggio: 23:07

There's excitement, your fingers are wet, you know it's. It's still made it so much easier and if you number one, you're saving a lot of money when you're losing them to the sharks. Now you're just losing the treble, treble hook.

Joey Leggio: 23:17

You usually get the weight to slide back up to your hand and snip it off right but I definitely think that rig that I've been using has definitely helped me out quite a bit with that and I just think the fish are swimming a little better. It has that weight now, instead of it being on, maybe it's pulling down a little, making them swim a little different.

Ed Gobbo: 23:34

Right.

Joey Leggio: 23:34

Because those fish are known. If that fish is injured, something's going on and actually another trick we could do. If your fish now is snag and you haven't gotten a hit and now he just becomes part of the school again, you know what you can do is take your rod and just like pop it like this a couple of times and it dispersed the bait that's there and now the only thing that's left is that one fish with the hook in it that's injured.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 23:53

Just sitting out there all in the open, looking injured Right.

Joey Leggio: 23:57

So that's another thing that could help you too. So eventually you know the fish gets up, they run, they come back together and they swim. You'll see your bunker start swimming back to the school. Let them run back into the school and it's popping. You literally will see the bait go.

Ed Gobbo: 24:12

Since we're on the topic of baits and tackle and stuff, mike Mara is asking do you like using the buck towels with the long tails that are made for Kobe?

Joey Leggio: 24:22

I think he's talking about the flare hawks. Yeah, I know that, that's what are you using?

Ed Gobbo: 24:25

are you using artificials or are you mostly bunker and and live bait bunkers?

Joey Leggio: 24:30

but my rod that I have ready to fire in case someone else has one. I have a uh, it's a gravity tackle, I believe the big eels he has. I don't know if you ever saw his tackle. It's a pretty sick lure and it swims unbelievable. But it sucks because the freaking bluefish love it as well yeah, the second they hit it it's gone.

Joey Leggio: 24:43

Just throw it away. I've used that. The one I hooked up on the lordo. That one time was actually an al gags, uh, whipping eel fish, which is another really good lure, great stripe of lure. That's the one I actually hooked the fish up on the lure uh, last year, not this year. But uh, bucktails work great. I know people that have caught them with bucktails, with a fat cow strip or something to that nature, and you know, work those and that's all they use down south either the flare, the flare tails.

Ed Gobbo: 25:05

I think they're called too like a flare bucktail they'll use flare hawks, but they're they're like a synthetic bucktail with like a real long strip down the bottom it's. They're kind of strange, I think first light makes those two right.

Joey Leggio: 25:17

First light tackle, I believe, makes those with a long strip on the back, on the bottom yeah, I don't know pretty sure, but that's basically have a rod ready, have that, that bucktail, ready, because they'll hit that as well.

Joey Leggio: 25:28

I like the chunk bait because it's less of a chance of the bunker swimming and getting tangled. It's just basically naturally just flowing, you know, and it goes away and you don't have to cast right on top of the fish that's up. You cast a little behind it, a little above it, or just so get it away from that fish, you know, and they'll, they'll just say, and they'll say it, they'll come right to it and eat it. And that's definitely the way to. You know, do your best and capitalize on one.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 25:49

So when you find these schools that you're going to start fishing, so okay. So it sounds like, for the most part, you're going to start off trying to snag some of the bunker and going to leave it snagged, and that's how you're searching with that.

Joey Leggio: 26:01

Well, first, we get a couple in the boat too. We always want to have a couple boats in the bait and the bait. Well, this way we're ready. In case we do get the one fish, we have other baits that are ready to go. You know, you can cast out a chuck or cast out another livey, which is no problem.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 26:14

Okay, so you do that. You have it on that rig, the knocker rig. I really like that weights because you're right as soon as you it. I've never used those bunker snags, you know everyone was complaining. Well, now you have to switch it to a circle hook for striped bass. I'm like I did that anyway because I hated having that huge four or five ounce thing on the rod. I don't like fishing striped bass with rods that heavy, unless I absolutely have to. But I like the idea of using that, that lighter treble and that lighter. But how are you fishing it? So you snag it up? Are you just letting it go, or are you trying to get it down below the school of bunker? Or are you kind of moving it out to the outside, or are you just letting it go?

Joey Leggio: 26:56

I'm letting it do its thing and just trying to make it act erratic by popping a rod here and there. Okay, trying to make it look different than all the others and let the fish know it's injured.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 27:04

Okay, all right, so it's not one of these. Like weak fish, get below the school and they'll be sitting down there. It's going to be anywhere on the periphery, maybe underneath, but you're generally sounds to me like you're generally up top.

Joey Leggio: 27:17

Up top or a few feet below. I noticed that when I was fishing the other way. I would go up above the school and then have it drifting. Through the prior year I would take a three-way with a leader and a heavy sink and drop it down to the bottom and just call sharks. Every single time Not saying it's not going to work. It might work. It hasn't worked for me. It was always a shark in that.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 27:38

Well, to your point, sharks do sit underneath any bait school. That's getting blitzed because they can just grab everything that comes down, all the heads and all the tails. Yeah, they're just grabbing the scraps. They don't have to be up there with the spinners and the black tips. That's where you probably end up catching, like a lot of the browns and exactly and the other species that aren't necessarily going to be full speed.

Joey Leggio: 28:00

You know blue shark going crazy going it's funny it is a lot of browns we would catch on that way and all the spinners and the black tips on that surface, which are a lot of fun. You know those, they jump, they're. They're a very cool shark. There's nothing wrong with catching them on light spin gear. It's a lot of fun. You sometimes you gotta actually chase them down. It's just dumping you and you can't stop these fish.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 28:18

Yes, yeah definitely fun and you ever catch any blue sharks when you're doing it.

Joey Leggio: 28:24

No, I haven't caught them yet. I've had blues spinners, browns, I guess, some duskies. I heard of some bull sharks up here that were caught, which was pretty neat.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 28:35

I always like the blue sharks, even though they're not big, because they're so fast. Those and Makos just have that speed. Hammerheads are fantastic fighting fish, so I've never hooked a hammerhead.

Joey Leggio: 28:46

We have a lot of those over here now, man.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 28:49

I've seen a lot. I've targeted them. I've seen some really, really big ones, but I don't know. I guess they're smarter than me because I never was able to fool one to grab one of my baits when I was out there fishing.

Joey Leggio: 29:02

They fight good too. It's another good fight in fishing, fun Plus. It's cool to see. I like exotics. I never caught a sheepshead up here. I'm dying to get a sheepshead. My buddy has got a ton on his kayak catch and I'm like I've got to take you out there one day. I'm dying to get one. Just to say I caught it in New York. I've tried a couple times.

Ed Gobbo: 29:20

I know a guy that makes some jigs for them. You do.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 29:25

Ed, you're going to have to send some up to them. Yeah, definitely, the sheep's head are fun. I've actually caught a lot more than I've put on video this summer and they are a lot of fun. But man, cobia is still on that list for me.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 29:38

I haven't caught one, although I also haven't targeted them specifically when I've been down South I have not put that on the list of target and up in New Jersey, you know, when I had my boat, they weren't that big of a thing. It was like you were talking about it's like the trophy thing that maybe you'd catch one, but you'd be kind of a lunatic if you targeted them. Well, now you could target them, and it's funny, though, as I look through on Facebook and Instagram and YouTube, there are cobia caught in New Jersey, but the real hoopla is up in New York. That's where people seem to be getting into them day after day after day. So what's your thought on the fishery? Is this something that you can just go out target and say you know what? I have a reasonable chance of coming home with a today 100, absolutely.

Joey Leggio: 30:28

We've actually gone out and targeted them, and one strictly for the kobe, and capitalized and came home with fish and to me, if you catch one, it's a great day. Ready, it's done, it's already a great day. If you have more than one, that's fantastic, yeah. But uh, I, I mean, I don't know how to bait is up there. We have just so much bunker by us.

Joey Leggio: 30:44

It's like we're kind of like in a pocket, I guess, because if you look at the way our inlet is deb's inlet, that's where I'm out of deb's inlet, okay and you have jones to the east and you have rockway inlet to the right there to the west, and it just seems like it's like almost like a little elbow if you look at it, and maybe the bait is getting stacked in there and it's just sitting there. I don't know.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 31:02

I don't know why they come in this way. That's kind of my theory for why Atlantic City seems to get the cobia and the bigger stripers than the Brigantine Atlantic City areas, because you also have that kind of little alcove there where the state takes a different direction at that point. And I don't know if it's true or not, but you and I are thinking the same thing.

Joey Leggio: 31:23

It could hold the bait there for some reason. There's a reason why the fish are in that area. They are getting them down to the east. They had them off of Fire Island, they had them off of Jones. I don't know how far, but they did have them. But it seems like we have the most, the abundance of the like we had out of my inlet. So I would go out there trolling. You would catch 10, 15 fish, all 30 pounds or better, trolling with mojos and spoons.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 31:54

Now it's like you're trolling, you get like one how far up are you from the uh, from the raritan?

Joey Leggio: 32:00

I think it's like to get to tip around. I think it might be like 14 miles and then to go deep back. It's like 22 miles to get back over there.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 32:07

All right, so close, but not well. Yeah, and what size boat do you have?

Joey Leggio: 32:11

23 foot skiff. Well, the ride's pretty, pretty decent. It's like a normal skiff. It has a nice ride on it.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 32:26

But still, it's a skiff yeah, without a doubt. Yeah, if you're in a 30 footer yeah yeah, what was that, ed that you were saying?

Ed Gobbo: 32:35

I said the raritan's, so big it turns up, you feel like you're in the ocean, yeah oh yeah, you get out there in the middle.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 32:42

It's fun in a kayak because you get out there and people are like what the hell are you doing here? It's like I don't know the same thing as you, but man, it get bad. It can get bad quick, though. You know.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 32:50

You get that east wind coming in, or really east, northeast, and all of a sudden that swell starts pushing in on the outgoing oof yes get nasty like that, and it's not just nasty for the, it's probably less nasty for the kayaks than it is for the boats, because then you got some really crazy stuff going on there. So when, during the season, are you thinking of starting to target the Cobia? Are you starting, you know, drop the boat in the water.

Joey Leggio: 33:17

As soon as I see those sharks. The second I see those sharks coming. I know they're blacked out today I'm going for them. It just seems like they're right, they come together. It seems like they're all swimming up the coast and it seems like they all show up at the same time. Again, I'm no master at this. I only have basically now two years of experience doing this.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 33:34

Right.

Joey Leggio: 33:34

So that would be my theory, and every year you're going to learn something new about them. What's going on with? That's what I found out so far and when did that start?

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 33:43

did that start this year around july?

Joey Leggio: 33:51

it might even be june. They started coming.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 33:52

I have to look back on my log. Is my facebook?

Joey Leggio: 33:53

I look back at my pictures on facebook. Yeah, yeah I hear.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 33:55

I was trying to time adjust for when we started seeing sharks down here and we started seeing them, I think, mid to late july or june. So I was thinking maybe it's a little longer before we went a couple hundred miles north, but again, anything near that. Raritan is just different. I don't know what it is about the raritan right now. It used to be the delaware bay. You just had this awesome fishery, you know, within 20, 30 miles of that. Now that's gone, now it's up in the raritan they crushed the bass over there.

Joey Leggio: 34:23

It's amazing the bass fish you have there and all, like I said, all through the summer. Even you know you can go out there today and still kill them. My buddy was on uh on the gypsy the other day and they shot up there into new york harbor and they limit out on the boat on stripers midsummer, you know.

Ed Gobbo: 34:36

Yeah, it's pretty cool I must feel like the, the fish that were plentiful in the South are like moving further North. And then, like the further South, like the exotics, the Cobia, the reds, the specs, like they're starting to slide up. I feel like everything's starting to move North.

Joey Leggio: 34:55

It's like with a new North Carolina now in Long Island. It's cause it's like all that North Carolina fishing is coming this way Now that's not a bad thing. There's been Kingfish caught by us too. Way now, that's not a bad thing. There's been kingfish caught by us too. I haven't caught one yet, but people catching kingfish like that's that's pretty awesome. You know, to catch a kingfish on london island, that's awesome, are we talking northern kings or no?

Ed Gobbo: 35:12

real macro, the real king, the northern kings.

Joey Leggio: 35:15

We catch all the time, but no, the real stuff. Oh, that would be amazing.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 35:19

Yeah, I could deal with a little global warming for that.

Joey Leggio: 35:25

I think the seasons are shifting. That's what I think. I definitely think the seasons like April is horrible. Now April is an extension of the winter, yet October, december, it's pretty damn nice yeah.

Ed Gobbo: 35:33

I think definitely like a season shift. December I was out fishing in my kayak and a t-shirt. It was like 60 degrees.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 35:40

Maybe not our lifetime but in December might be the new august, who knows. Yeah, really. Yeah, last season we were tog fishing in december mid to actually it was right before christmas and we were out there and I think we threw you might have had a t-shirt on that, but I think I threw a sweatshirt on because I thought I should, but kind of regretted it- no, that's when you put your dry suit on, and I laughed at you for it, the water was still getting a little close.

Ed Gobbo: 36:08

Water was getting down there right.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 36:09

Look, I don't put a dry suit on, unless I think it's a bit of a concern.

Joey Leggio: 36:15

April is freezing.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 36:16

That's all I know you don't even want to put your boat in the water anymore.

Joey Leggio: 36:19

in April it's like why bother?

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 36:21

Dude, try launching a kayak in that water. It's freezing, because your feet are getting wet, and I'm not one of those guys that wears waterproof boots and everything. I'm I'm like jumping in with like regular shoes on and getting my feet wet every time. Oh, my god, I just want to cry.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 36:36

It's so cold so cold I should just invest in the, the bigger boots, all right, so so when do you think that the kobe are going to leave, though? That's a question that we've had in there a couple of times. So you see them, let's say June, let's say June. Ish, they're going to show up around the time that the sharks start start moving in and that they're going to be around the bunker pods. When are you going to look at them to start leaving?

Joey Leggio: 37:00

I think they're already starting to leave and I know one was my buddy had one. He was actually tuna fishing and he had a Kobe on the tuna rod and that was, I'm guessing, six days ago that he had that one. But other than that I haven't. Like I only get out one day a week. Just so you guys know that I'm not fishing like a lot. I'm a stay-at-home dad. I have my two little boys with me, so I'm one day a week. But um, that was, I'm guessing, six days ago. I have not been out to know. You know, I don't think I would target them anymore unless I was just coming home and sort of bungle school. Maybe I would just pass on to see if anything was sitting there. I don't think I would actually go out and talk with them at this point. I think they're definitely heading back down to, you know, virginia and all that stuff so we probably have a few more weeks in new jersey.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 37:42

Down here in in Delaware we have people in New Jersey, delaware and Maryland actually that watch the stream and listen to the podcast, so we probably have a little bit of time down here.

Joey Leggio: 37:52

I would think so yeah.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 37:53

Yeah, you might want to just kind of start wrapping it up. Maybe get out a couple of times to give it a go up in New York. How far north have you heard of people catching them? How far north in New York? I haven't seen anything north of New York.

Joey Leggio: 38:05

I think maybe, like in the Montauk area, there might've been one or two, or the Hamptons, maybe. I thought I read somewhere, but that's all I have. That's all I heard of. I haven't seen anything else.

Joey Leggio: 38:13

And I like a couple of guys that I talk to them every day, that I call them up and I really haven't caught any. So I mean, these guys are out there every day. They'll go before work in the morning. They're out there for a couple of hours and they had some numbers. They caught a lot of fish, these guys way more than I caught. And for them to not be catching it's not like these guys just said, oh, I'm just going to go give it a whirl. These guys have caught plenty to know. So I would definitely think they're definitely on the way.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 38:40

I'm not saying you won't one, you know, still still sure there's plenty around, but not like it was, that's for sure yeah, well, I had the philosophy if you can get out there and you just want to just give it a go, you know, like like ed, when we went out this weekend I was like is it even really worth going? Because the conditions weren't going to be great after all the storms and everything I was like yeah, why not I?

Ed Gobbo: 39:01

mean I wasn't doing anything, I wasn't disappointed. We went though man because that one creek that I found that was really cool.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 39:09

Oh yes.

Ed Gobbo: 39:10

Worth the exploration.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 39:11

Yeah, we did a little exploring, had a big shark come through in the flat in about a foot of water and we didn't know what it was. It was big. We didn't know what it was, just saw the puff of all the mud flying up and I had to go back on video and slow it down and colorize the video to get the shape of it Very clearly a dorsal fin on there. We thought it might've been something else, but it was definitely a shark that got spooked.

Joey Leggio: 39:38

That's definitely a little scary in a kayak. Yeah, it's fun.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 39:41

We've had a lot of sharks. We've had a lot of sharks in the backwater and in the flats too. I'm talking, you know, four feet down to one foot, and these are all you know five foot sharks, mostly brown people are saying there's bulls. I haven't seen a bull. I've seen several, probably half a dozen browns in the exact spot that they're saying bull. So I'm guessing maybe they're misidentifying I don't seem to.

Joey Leggio: 40:06

I know for a fact two up here. My buddy, steve, had one, and I forget who. The other guy had one, but steve definitely had one. He's trying to pitch. I'm like, holy shit, that's a bull shark dude. He definitely had one.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 40:15

100 that would be. That would be fun.

Joey Leggio: 40:18

I've never caught a bull shark actually I caught him in the bahamas but never up here.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 40:22

Yeah.

Joey Leggio: 40:24

It's crazy.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 40:25

Maybe they are back there. I'm decent at identifying sharks and I'm saying they're sandbars, so they're browns, yeah.

Joey Leggio: 40:34

It's a thresher.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 40:35

It's a thresher, they're really hard to identify, though, in fairness to everybody, sharks are not easy to identify. Even for experts, there are certain things that you know well.

Ed Gobbo: 40:47

It's definitely a black tip, are you sure? Because you can't see its belly you can't see underneath.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 40:51

So you're not 100 sure. So in fairness that's, I'll just say that I'm doubtful that it was bull.

Joey Leggio: 40:58

It was a bull shark, but I actually just put a picture on my Instagram account that shows a difference between a spinner and a black top A black tip Black top. I'm in mercenary now, so it's pretty funny that the black tip shark actually its anal fin is white and the spinner has the black tip on it, which is crazy because you would think totally the opposite.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 41:18

Yeah, but that's really the only way that you can tell them apart, right?

Joey Leggio: 41:22

Their fins, the pec fins yeah, I think it's almost like between a yellow and a blue fin, where they'll touch the, the fin on the back, the dorsal oh, okay I think one I'd have to look at the picture again.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 41:34

One actually touches it, the other one's shy of touching it see, that's why, that's why I say it's so hard to identify it, because that's where you really, for me, I need a need, a side-by-side.

Joey Leggio: 41:43

Right, yeah, but who's going to want to touch and take its fin and push it to the side to see if it's going to touch it Right? Maybe, like that guy that lost his pinky or something. That was another video that went viral.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 41:52

Oh my God, that guy. Oh yeah, I saw that he did that.

Joey Leggio: 41:57

With the kid in the boat. Yeah, but it wanted to look real quick and see something real fast.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 42:01

While you're looking that up, I'll tell you I was out fishing with my brother-in-law years. It was probably a decade ago and we're out fishing on my boat and we were fluke fishing. But I threw out a half a bluefish on a rod and I let it sit on the bottom and ended up pulling in a nice-sized brown shark. My brother-in-law wasn't thinking he just reaches over whatever, grabs it like it's a big dogfish and is holding it up right next to his face and I was like it has teeth, he turns around and he's staring right at its teeth.

Ed Gobbo: 42:30

And you know how strong he just dropped that thing, it's right here.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 42:34

Oh my God, he was like oh, he threw that right there.

Joey Leggio: 42:37

That's scary. Does that get you there? You're on a boat. You're done If you cut.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 42:40

That you're done. I'm going to try this.

Joey Leggio: 42:42

Let's see if this works. You see them. Yep. Now, if you can see, look at the black tip. It's got a white tip and the spinner actually has the black.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 42:51

So that's the only way that I knew how to tell the difference between the two really.

Joey Leggio: 42:55

And now look at the fins here. I don't know if you can see it.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 42:58

I can't see what I'm doing you how the fins are closer to the dorsal yeah on the black tip, whereas the spinner, the dorsal, is further back okay, so, and that, ladies and gentlemen, is why it's very difficult to discern the difference between sharks while they're in the water, unless it's a hammerhead yeah, that you can tell yeah, you can tell the hammerheads and the bonnet head and the the bonnets, but otherwise, yeah, it's, it's difficult.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 43:24

All right, so we got the cobia moving out. So what's your plan going to be for the? You know you're switching off of that. Are you going to be switching over to blackfish, primarily at this point?

Joey Leggio: 43:32

not yet. That doesn't start till october 15th. I'm a big bottom fishing guy. I love bottom fishing so I'm I'm happy catching sea bass porgies right now. You get the fluke set up on all the wrecks so that's always nice. You get some nice big fluke. Actually, one of the things you could do is, if you're getting the beguiles, take that beguile, your little beguile fish, take that, pop it on a hook, drop it straight down. If there's a big fluke over there, they pounce on them. They love them. They love the beguiles.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 44:09

So that's a little thing there. You're catching the balls. Take one, throw a hook, toss it, toss it out. Why not? We're like to lose, we're like from different worlds. I've never caught a porgy I have. I've only caught maybe five bergal in my life, all by accident. The first one that I ever caught I foul hooked and a big sea bass ended up taking it. So it's like I was snag fishing and a nice keeper size sea bass on a party boat and after that just random foul hooks. Never caught a Bergall.

Joey Leggio: 44:31

I'll tell you nothing, speaking about sea bass. If you catch a Bergall or a Conner, fillet it. And if you're sea bass fishing, take that fillet and just one time put it through the hook and put it on. Like you know, you have a high low. Put it on the top hook yeah and it's like that flutter and usually get some big sea bass on that too I'll have to do that from the fillet I think I have to do.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 44:49

I need to do more fishing where I'm targeting this kind of stuff I've never targeted. You know, porgy is one thing that I really want to go after, because everyone keeps telling me, pound for pound, great fight in this fish for light tackle, and I've never caught one in my life also great for tacos.

Joey Leggio: 45:05

They make awesome fish tacos see that works for me that's why we're fat dads yeah, exactly because that's what we do.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 45:15

We like it yeah yeah, so I'm into that all right, so you're gonna, you're gonna be looking at the bottom fishing and then you're gonna switch over to the blackfish. Are you gonna be fishing the migration for the striped bass at all?

Joey Leggio: 45:25

Yes, what I do is I used to do a lot of combo trips so I wouldn't do the bass first, only because you can't have bass in possession in federal waters. So for me to start with the bass and then go to blackfish, and now I'm like, oh my God, I'm five miles off, you're getting a lot of trouble.

Joey Leggio: 45:39

So what I would do is we'll go for the blackfish first and then basically, okay, we've got a limit, we didn't get a limit whatever. Let's spend the last hour and a half and do a little trawling. You know, throw some mojos in. It's very easy fishing, whereas the spoons can be a little, you know, beat you up a little bit with the wire and stuff. So now it's very simple, just to throw these mojos in the water and trawl around. And you know a lot. Basically, even just coming home, working your way back home, working on the 40-foot depths, going out to the 50, going back to the 30, whatever, Just zigzagging all over the place, working your way back to the inlet.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 46:09

And what are you putting in the spread when you're trolling back in?

Joey Leggio: 46:12

Usually what I do is I'll do two spoons on the outriders and then I'll have two mojos going down. That's the four-rod setup.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 46:20

I'm trolling. Okay, are you using those really big spoons or are you using the more traditional?

Joey Leggio: 46:24

I have the Tony Majas I use. They're great. I like to use the Tony Majas when you're trolling with the Mojos because the Tony Maja spoon requires a little bit less speed to get it to work properly. Now if you go to like, say, the TGTs, the Reliables, that's a little bit of a faster speed.

Joey Leggio: 46:45

One thing about the mojos they work at any speed it really doesn't matter, but I like to go a little slower with them because I want them to sink a little deeper. Gotcha, and speaking about striped bass too, is like always watch your fish finder, because if those fish are just staying at 20 feet of water, well, don't have 300 feet of wire out, because now you're below the fish. You always want to make sure it's tradition Dump the whole 300 feet where you're going to catch the fish. That doesn't always work. So if you see these fish just constantly, you're seeing them in 20 feet, 20 feet crank that up and you don't get like 200 feet of wire out and don't leave the whole 300 out I think a lot of people don't understand how to determine how deep their baits are getting, so they just kind of let it out until it looks a certain distance off the back.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 47:19

You know, and they're, they're not really quite sure, yeah, and I think a lot of them end up just trolling three feet down, four feet down, because they're not nearly as far back as they should be.

Joey Leggio: 47:29

Well, also, too, when you're letting out your spoons. So a spoon is basically like this so now, if you're holding any type of pressure on it, it's kind of riding like a boat, you know, because it has that little rounded bottom. So what you want to do is you kind of like want to be almost free spool so that thing's just free dropping. If you put any pressure on that spoon, it's definitely not where it is. It's a lot harder than you think it is. You know, it's basically hit that water, hit the water pressures, hit it from your boat pulling that spoon and it's just coming up yep, you know you got to get it down to the depth first and then yeah exactly so.

Joey Leggio: 47:57

I mean it's kind of tough because if it backlashes you know the wire sucks if you have to replace wire. So you kind of like put just enough pressure where it's not spinning back and just let that free sink as fast as you can it's been a long time since I've been doing any trolling on a boat, but I man a backlash on the wire.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 48:14

I remember that. And, man, we got lazy. So we would just put the uh, the planers on the, on the, the deep rods, and then that would get us down to a certain depth, depending on the size and the speed that you're going. That was my lazy trolling. That was mainly for tuna and mahi and bluefish, though that's big in Florida with the kingfish.

Joey Leggio: 48:33

They do that with the planers.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 48:35

Yeah, I just think it's so much easier. As soon as you hook up, it's going to trip the planer and it's going to come right back up to the surface, so you see a deep rod coming up.

Joey Leggio: 48:44

you know, you know you've had something smack it you know, you don't even have to have it on the outriggers well, that's what the whole mojo didn't change everything too, because the wires, like you say, the wires of pain and the button do it. So now these mojos, you basically put it on your braid. You're not fighting all the wire. If you're still fighting a heavy, it could be a 16 ounce, a 24 ounce mojo, a tandem rig, but it's definitely it's more enjoyable for people to fish that way I agree, and and oftentimes you need to have somebody who really knows what they're doing in order to do spoons correctly absolutely no.

Joey Leggio: 49:13

That's all technique. You have to watch that tip of that rod and make sure you have that rhythm. You know if it's, if it's going like this, you know a spoon's basically spinning, you know you gotta have the slight waggle on it yeah yeah, once it starts twitching you gotta start reeling

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 49:29

you gotta get that thing reset, not fun just the speeds.

Joey Leggio: 49:32

It's always adjusting speeds. What are you going with the current against the current cross current?

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 49:36

you always adjust it to make sure that's right yeah to get that rhythm so so we're coming up on about an hour here. There were a couple of things that I wanted to ask and actually, ed, if you want to, while I'm asking this, go through and just see if there are any things that we missed. Yeah, in the in the chat I wanted to ask. So we know that the cobia fishing's getting better. The sheep's head, I believe, are getting better up in new york. I'm seeing a lot in new york, long Island Sound, even, and Raritan area. You mentioned the fluke earlier, though. It's just not as good. What's your thought on the fluke for 2020?

Joey Leggio: 50:13

No, I'm saying the striped bass have changed, not the fluke, the fluke fishing to me. I think the fluke fishing is good, I enjoy it. It's great for kids too. I love taking kids fluke fishing. The striped bass definitely isn't.

Joey Leggio: 50:27

We're not getting that, uh, that migration coming past our inlet like we had. Right. You know, like I was saying this fish now way, way deeper, and I think that's what's happened. I don't think it's so much that the fish aren't around, I just think that the migration pattern has changed drastically. You know, like, look at the fish, look at raritan bay, how low it is with stripers. You know there's tons of fish but yet right here, a couple miles away, we're not getting them like we had. We are catching them, but not like we used to catch them. Right so. But everything shifted, everything's changing in this world right now. So whether it's the migrations that they're taking, where they're just going right past us and maybe shooting right up the block in Montauk, you know, bypass that whole little let's call it the armpit. Basically it looks like you know of where my inlet is. So who knows?

Joey Leggio: 51:04

But the fluke fishing, you know the fluke has always been decent. I love fishing in the bay in the spring. You know you want in the early spring. You're right in that bay and you find them, they're coming in. You get some real nice ones too, right, and uh, I like fishing. Now we got, you know, the peanut bunk we have is incredible, so it's fun. Throw the net and just catch the peanut bun and just go fish with those. It's so much fun. They just pounce on those baits and, you know, in the bay too it's a lot of fun.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 51:28

Yeah, oh, definitely, definitely. You know it's funny you mentioned with the. If you think about where you are in relation to where I normally would fish in the past in South Jersey we had an outstanding migration for striped bass through the Delaware Bay, around the Cape May Rips and straight up to southern New Jersey and that's gone. I mean, you just can't. This used to be legendary fishing for striped bass and it's moved and I think it's now it's up north and now it's hitting Raritan and I'm wondering if maybe, as it continues to move more north all the way up to the other side of New Jersey, to the top side of the state, if now it won't start to turn on a little bit for your area as they continue to move up, maybe you'll end up with those legendary fishing things for a couple of decades like we had down here.

Joey Leggio: 52:17

It's got to be the migration shift. What else would?

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 52:20

it be, it has to be.

Joey Leggio: 52:21

Look at the bluefin tuna now that we're getting over here, by us, that's insane. I don't fish for them, but the guys that fish for them, they're capitalizing on some real big fish.

Ed Gobbo: 52:31

We had that one conversation with Jim from the Fisherman and he was talking about that. Yeah, he was talking about this dredging and I keep going back to it, but it makes sense. Ever since they did this dredging offshore, they destroyed all this stuff, at least down here, and it's never been the same. It's starting to come back, but I don't think they've done much of it since then.

Joey Leggio: 52:51

Well, I think that's interesting because they're passing you before they come to me, so maybe that's something that happened down there is making that migration shift and they're not coming towards us now. Who?

Ed Gobbo: 53:01

knows. That's possible mean the last the last couple years we've gotten more than we have right. Like I said, I think it's getting back to the way it was, a little bit at least but it got bad, man, I mean.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 53:16

And to jim's point when he was on, well, I don't actually remember if this was his exact point, but but I'm going to add my point. They have absolutely destroyed these habitats offshore and nobody cares, right, as long as that beach, that nice clean sand, can get pumped up on the beach for the millionaires, that's all that matters to these shore towns and it takes a lot. And the funny thing is it's all going to be gone after the first nor'easter hits. So they're going to pump their $10 million worth of sand up there. They're going to destroy a mile and a half of of good habitat that used to hold these fish. You know nice contours on the bottom and all that sand is now loose up on the beach. It washes out now. It's just all flat with nothing growing on it because it's all covered over by that sand and I think that that's a that's a big issue.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 54:04

Not, I'm not a fan of the beach replenishment. I understand why they want to do it. You know it also does protect the beaches and the towns, but it is what it is. Man You're, you got a house on the shore. You know we were talking. My wife and I were talking about getting a house in OBX and we're like we just have to be willing to lose the house, right, because at some point you're gonna lose the house you're gonna get a hurricane.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 54:26

Yeah, yeah, it is it is what it is. So I I don't know. I'm seeing that, but maybe it'll. Maybe it'll bode well for you up there that you know, as the migration moves further north, maybe someday it'll be actually going in boston harbor as the main place and and it'll be ripping down there in Long Island.

Joey Leggio: 54:44

Maybe our next conversation we'll be talking about tarpon fishing, who knows?

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 54:48

That would be fun. They've been up here.

Joey Leggio: 54:51

Yeah, that'd be crazy.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 54:53

Yeah, I would say not enough to target, though, but they've definitely been up here. A couple of comments in there that the seals are also killing a lot of these fish. There are a lot of seals killing a lot of these fish. There are a lot of seals which are just brutal. It's really for my money it's the spiny dogfish.

Joey Leggio: 55:13

And it's the Cullmarans. Yeah, the cullmarans are the worst.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 55:16

Yes, and the dolphins.

Joey Leggio: 55:20

Dolphins eat everything. Yeah.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 55:22

It's insane. I mean I never as a kid growing up down next to the water every summer it was it was a rarity to hear of a dolphin in the backwaters. And now they come through in pods, like multiple pods, just destroying the weak fish. You know that you're you're bailing weak fish and all of a sudden you know you get 30. You get three pods of 10 dolphins come through and then it's dead and all you see are scales floating around. Oh wow, it's terrible, it's decimating them?

Joey Leggio: 55:53

yeah, well, it's definitely. Look at the boats now in freeport. They're actually doing whale watching tours. Like that was something you have to go up to p town for, yeah, and now you have it right here in freeport actual, actual people are paying to go whale watching on Long Island. Everything has changed. The bunker has a big part of it since they stopped the same net and the amount of bait that we have here is insane. It's so much bait. You always have bait. My backyard right now is a bait throw. I can go on my boat right now. Throw my cast net and I'll have bunker for bait. It's all over the place in my canal pull over to place in my canal.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 56:25

That was one of the things that was driving ed and I crazy when we were out this weekend was there was so much bait that you couldn't and you couldn't tell if there was anything on it. So it's like, all right, well, let's, let's fish this mullet. Okay, we fish that mullet. And then 30 yards you're still fishing that, you still see it there. But then 30 yards away, mullet bust somewhere. You know it starts busting. So you're're casting there and it's like, well, there's nothing on that and we were bouncing. We must have bounced around like a couple hundred large schools of peanut bunker and mullet in the backwaters in that one day.

Joey Leggio: 56:56

It was exhausting. Bigger mullet those little guys.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 56:58

Yeah, those are the things.

Joey Leggio: 56:59

Yeah, I like those.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 57:05

Yeah, those are the ones that you want to net those, those make great great life, great yeah, yeah.

Joey Leggio: 57:07

That's a good fluke bait to them all. That's awesome bait it is.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 57:11

I wish that we, I wish I would have brought my net. I actually didn't know where my cast net was and I just found it, so I'm gonna. I gotta go out and practice again. I haven't thrown it in a few years they're a great thing to have.

Joey Leggio: 57:21

It gets so so much better with those things.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 57:23

So, Ed, were there any questions that we missed up to this point? I think we pretty much touched on everything.

Ed Gobbo: 57:30

Selfless promotion. Here KB gave me a shout out, which thank you, buddy. Other than that, I think we pretty much touched on a lot, of, a lot of the questions that we had in there.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 57:40

Okay, all right, I have one, one more thing, joey, to ask you, and that's about blackfish. So once you, once you move over to that, what's your approach going to be? As you, you know, I don't know how late you're going to keep your boat in the water, I don't know if you're going to just fish other boats later in the season, if you're going to go further offshore or what it is. But what? What's your plan for this fall and winter for blackfish?

Joey Leggio: 58:05

basically, I'm fishing as long as I can on my boat. I don't really like taking my boat over to 17 fountains and stuff again. It's small, it's cold, so I'm staying. All the local reefs, you know, rockaway, mcgallis, the ab reef, those are the spots I'm hitting. I blackfish a little different than everybody else.

Joey Leggio: 58:20

I think I don't like to be on the structure. Personally, I like to be next to the structure, right, you know I can't stand retiring rigs, obviously, so I always go. I like to get as close as I possibly can without being on top of it. I can see it on the machine, but you know you're scoped, you know your scope's coming right on. So I like to fish edges of any type of rock pile wreck, whatever it may be. I feel like the bigger fish are down there too. Um, I do.

Joey Leggio: 58:46

If, if it's a nasty, like a couple days, and the bottom's all turned up, then I'll go on top of what we have is. We call it the wall. So this, this structure it's like I guess it's concrete might be the belt park where they dumped a tremendous amount and it comes up, uh, 20 feet off the bottom. So now, if that bottom's turned up, I'm going to go sit on top of that pile of wreck and hopefully that 20 feet up might make a difference where that water's a little clearer, because definitely the blackfish are sight feeders and scent feeders, I believe. But I definitely think sight's a big part with the blackfish and any time you get heavy east winds, it seems, or the swells, it just shuts them down. So that time I'll go heavy on the structure. But you make jigs so it's no big deal for you. But guys that are buying these jigs, you know how much does a jig cost these days? $3, $4 for a Blackfish jig. I don't even know.

Ed Gobbo: 59:31

A couple of bucks.

Joey Leggio: 59:32

Yeah. So it's like you're getting snagged like crazy and those you can get out a little easier to get out. But as soon as black for season opens, I'm going. I love it, I love catching them, I love them. Get them on spin gear. It's so much fun, you know. But that's it.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 59:46

As soon as it opens, I'm going yeah, but I'll get all the local reefs. Are you using jakes more than you're using rigs, then?

Joey Leggio: 59:51

yeah, absolutely, it's so much fun. I do still. You know, everybody still uses the snafu rig and if you have a lot of current, I'll go with a single hook. Yeah, I just recently started using the one-way slide hook on it, like the Sweetheart rig. I think it's called something like that. It's like a hook on the two hooks on the line. I tried using that just to try to let less resistance in the water.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 1:00:10

That's always the challenge. That's always the challenge, and when I'm going in the winter it's going to be on a party boat, and the one thing that I really don't like is half the time you end up getting stuck having to use the rigs and you can't use a jig because with all the rigs around, just like with 12 ounces on, it's going straight down. You can't have any scope out on your line there or else you're going to be that guy and I just don't like rig fishing for them.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 1:00:37

I don't know why, I guess I just don't like. The weight is probably what it is. The jig is awesome.

Joey Leggio: 1:00:40

I. I don't know why. I guess I just don't like.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 1:00:41

the weight is probably what it is. The jig is awesome. I love the jig.

Joey Leggio: 1:00:43

Yeah, you know what's cool about the jig too is that, like I said, I'm fishing the sides of wrecks. If that jig is walking across the bottom, it doesn't matter, they still will pounce on it. It almost looks like a crab now is walking along the bottom of the ocean, whereas the weight maybe is a little different. But nothing beats a jig. It's so much fun. That's the greatest thing that ever happened.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 1:01:09

Yeah, and Ed loves when we start losing things.

Joey Leggio: 1:01:10

Of course.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 1:01:11

Ed loves for us to just anchor up right on top of the heaviest structure possible with the sharpest metal. The newest wrecks are the best for him.

Joey Leggio: 1:01:19

Nice and sticky.

Ed Gobbo: 1:01:24

Yeah, I can't wait. It's fun. Now I just need to get some scuba gear so I can just go down and get them back and get them back, sell them back to you, so I don't have to make them.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 1:01:29

Yeah you know it's fun, it's funny, joey. There there's one bridge that I fished a lot and there's a piece of rope that hangs about three feet below the waterline at low tide, but you can see it there and without fail I'll put one edge jigs on and I'll be like I can get around that and I'll put it down there and somehow I always touch that damn thing. There must be like four pounds of edge jigs on that damn piece of rope and if I just had some scuba gear I could go down there and get it.

Ed Gobbo: 1:02:01

I'm going to need those coordinates. Rich yeah. If I just had some scuba gear I could go down there and get it.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 1:02:03

I'm going to need those coordinates, rich. Yeah, there are a lot of jigs on that rope a lot and that rope's been there for I don't know how it's still there. It's been there probably 15 years at this point. Oh, it's just this big, huge, thick nylon rope, so it's stuck there.

Joey Leggio: 1:02:20

And you ain't getting it out.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 1:02:25

Once that barb goes into the rope, it's definitely not coming out. You get that feeling, you know. You just feel it just bite and sink and you're like, oh no, it's like. It's like when you I don't know if you've ever done this, if you've ever buried a four-wheel drive in the sand no, I man, it's just the feeling when you bury those tires and you just know you hit the axle and you're done. That's the feeling I get when I hit that rope.

Joey Leggio: 1:02:43

So yeah, I'm not a surf fishing guy, definitely not a surf fishing guy but I always see the pictures we see, like the bmws yes what are you thinking?

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 1:02:52

there. There's a town down here that has what is it's? The brigantine they have. They do a calendar of the people that try to go on the beach every year in their two-wheel drive cars and get stuck. And they do a calendar of the people that try to go on the beach every year in their two-wheel drive cars and get stuck, and they do it just every month, that's one of these joey? They're teslas, not the, not the trucks, but the cars.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 1:03:13

So they're bringing an electric car on the beach two-wheel drive onto the beach I mean with with the clearance underneath of just a couple inches and they're getting stuck. I don't know if you, if you saw doing Sandy I think it was Sandy when the the parking lot got all the salt water in there and all the Teslas went up with all that salt water hitting the batteries?

Joey Leggio: 1:03:35

Yeah, wipes those wires out.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 1:03:37

Yeah, and they just all ignited in the middle of the parking lot. There was something like 50 Teslas went up in that one parking lot and here this guy's trying to drive down into the water.

Joey Leggio: 1:03:47

Well, that was like after Sandy Lottie's houses went on fire Because of that. They would put the electricity back on. And all that wire that was two feet all these outlets, all that wire is corroded and boom, you turn it on, it sparks out, boom, houses are burning down like crazy after that because of it. Yeah, salt water is pretty bad.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 1:04:03

It's an acid, it's corrosive yes, yes, that's why I have to remember to clean my truck every time I drive into it. We just I only drive into it, not for surf fishing. I don't have any of those permits just to to launch a kayak. Being a fat dad I'm, I don't want to carry 150 or pull a 150-pound kayak fully loaded from the truck down to the water. I back up as close as I can. Ed doesn't want to do that. He's like screw it. I'm not hurting my truck. He loves his truck a little more than I love mine.

Joey Leggio: 1:04:33

The kayak's 150 pounds and everything, yeah, fully loaded. You have those wheels that go on the bottom, I guess, and you tow it.

Ed Gobbo: 1:04:39

Yeah, they. You have those wheels that go on the bottom, I guess, and you tow it.

Joey Leggio: 1:04:41

Yeah, they don't work that good, though no, that's a lot of weight to move.

Ed Gobbo: 1:04:44

It is. My son got into it, especially at the launch. That's not that bad Well, it wasn't, we were stuck in a spring tide.

Joey Leggio: 1:04:53

Yeah.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 1:04:54

And we came in at dead low so it was just all rocks. I was like, oh my god, this sucks, it was. It was a terrible launch to get out of, but it is a great launch at any other tide because it's just one of those things you back up literally to the water and you just walk your kayak out, your you're launched and not that day.

Joey Leggio: 1:05:13

Sorry, ed the kayaks, sheep's head, right, I mean most of these guys that are catching sheep's head are on the kayaks. Yeah, nice and tight, all that. Any wood structure, wood structure, it seems like it seems like their favorite wood structure versus the concrete structure. I don't know. Like I said, I never really got them.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 1:05:27

I would agree with that. I've caught them Well. So concrete works, but it needs to be older concrete.

Ed Gobbo: 1:05:35

I think it's the growth.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 1:05:36

Yeah, it's wherever it has the barnacles on it.

Ed Gobbo: 1:05:39

Old do has the barnacles on it so old docks are awesome.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 1:05:41

I mean they're, they're great. So when you're getting out there for your sheep's head, well, you can do that now. You may as well throw that into your repertoire right now. This it's the time of year for sheep's head. I'm dying, huh I am dying to get one oh, I thought you said you're not gonna get one. I was like no, I'm dying again when I want one.

Joey Leggio: 1:05:58

So bad, I heard they taste good too, but they they're pretty cool. I watched one video actually speaking about learning from other places that are doing it. He would take like a gardener tool and he would just scrape the poles Right and all that barnacle would come down. He said now it's natural to him. Then he would take some off the pole and actually put it on the hook, not even bringing cramps.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 1:06:26

He was using selling barnacles at the beginning of the year, especially when they weren't they weren't getting a lot of the the green crabs in and everything like that for tog. So they were like, hey, look, okay. Oh and, and it was also at the time where they couldn't get sand fleece for some reason. I think there was a storm down south. They were bringing them in from down south. They're like but we got barnacles. I was like okay.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 1:06:46

Like an idiot. I bought a bag of barnacles and I didn't even use them, but I felt so stupid. I was like here I am in the kayak, six inches from me, is all these barnacles that I could ever want. I could have just scraped them, but yeah, but they, but yeah, they are a good bait.

Joey Leggio: 1:07:00

They're a good bait. Speaking about it, this is something I actually just got because I saw somebody do. It is the little pouches and you could take like those barnacles and crush them up and put them in one of those little mesh pouches and then put it on the hook and use that as a bait. Oh yeah, the little tiny mesh pouches these are for the salmon pouches, I think they're called.

Ed Gobbo: 1:07:16

Yeah, yeah, yeah, you can buy it in a big roll for, like, they use it for flowers and arrangements and stuff. I forget. I have some of it actually.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 1:07:24

Well, you can use it for bloodworms. Okay, put the bloodworm bag. It's a bloodworm bag. No, no, it's a mini little bag.

Joey Leggio: 1:07:31

It's this big. It's a tiny little bag and you could take like mussels, crush it up, throw it in a bag I think it's a chum and you put it on the hook and drop it down with a black, which I wanted to try it at this year and see how it worked out.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 1:07:47

That's a good idea.

Joey Leggio: 1:07:48

It's in anything. Use muscles. You think barnacles just crush something up? Pop the hook on it tightens it.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 1:07:57

Steal your idea and I'm gonna try it. Look about my thing.

Joey Leggio: 1:07:59

They're called salmon egg bags, I think, is what they're called. Okay, I'm pretty sure that's what it is yeah, but yeah, it's always trying new things. You know, like who would ever would think of something like that? But you see a video guy dude, I'm like god, that looks pretty interesting. Yeah, let's get out of world new york and see what happens.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 1:08:13

This fall we'll try for blackfish yeah, I'm going fishing tomorrow based on what. Somebody sent me a message saying you should try this and I was like, well, I've never even thought of that. I'm like that sounds like a good idea. And he said I don't know, I don't even know the guy. He's like I'm telling you it works. It works really well for me and I prefer it over the way that you do it. I was like I'm not doing anything tomorrow. I got my kayak out there in the rain right now. I'm ready to go. At 5 am I'm going to go out and I'm going to give it a try 5 am in the rain.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 1:08:44

No, yeah, hopefully it ends by the time I get two hours away.

Joey Leggio: 1:08:49

I got my little guy just came down, so I got Frankie, and now we have Nicholas over here. He's throwing his binky. I don't have food for you, buddy.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 1:08:57

Oh, there's the lord of the house, that's him.

Joey Leggio: 1:09:00

Say hi oh just crack me, Ed. That's the one that runs the household right now, right?

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 1:09:09

Future fisherman.

Joey Leggio: 1:09:10

Oh, I think he's tangled in me. Yeah, he loves the kayak. Come here, frankie. He absolutely loves the kayak right now, all the time. He doesn't want to go on the boat anymore. He's like I want to go on the kayak. Well, he loves the kayak right now, all the time. He doesn't want to go on the boat anymore. He's like I want to go on a kayak. Well, he can come down and go out with me and Ed. You want to go fishing with?

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 1:09:24

him. Yeah, yeah, yeah, we do a lot of that's what we do. You can see it.

Joey Leggio: 1:09:31

It's right there. See the kayak.

Ed Gobbo: 1:09:33

Yeah.

Joey Leggio: 1:09:37

Yeah, there's one behindty.

Ed Gobbo: 1:09:38

Yeah, that's the Salty, and then next to it I have a Big Water.

Joey Leggio: 1:09:43

Are those Hobies or not Hobies? Old Towns, old Towns. Okay, I've heard of Old Towns. Yeah, yeah, I just bought a paddle one for now, just to get used to it and try it. It was like a $300 kayak at Costco, just to try it.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 1:09:54

Yeah, that's the way to start. Don't ever get a really start with the paddle one. Yeah, I actually used the paddle one, an old, what was it? Ocean kayak, malibu too. So it was a. It was a tandem, but I only used it for me and I used the extra spot to put all my gear behind me. I use that for like 20 years, that and another one similar to it. And then I I determined, you know I could. I bought a boat and then I still use the kayak, and then I was like you know what? I get rid of this boat, I'm getting a pedal kayak, and that's what I ended up doing.

Joey Leggio: 1:10:25

Yeah, eventually that's what I will get from once it gets a little older.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 1:10:28

Yeah.

Joey Leggio: 1:10:29

You know, if they're in a hobby, they enjoy it Like, let's do it for them. You know, I'd rather be doing that than being on video games or something like that. Agre, I just want to get them out in the water and get them to the outdoors.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 1:10:41

You know, get out of here 100%. Hey, they're always welcome on this stream. So is there anything that we missed, especially on the Cobia front, that we should mention before we?

Ed Gobbo: 1:10:52

wrap this up.

Joey Leggio: 1:10:53

Just basically what we were talking about before, like if you snag one of these baits and you stun them, you get them in the gills or something like that, and that bait just spin and it's sinking. I always like to change those out, you'll know right away. If you start it, there's no movement, it goes straight to the bottom and it's it's a dead bait. So if I see that and also they'll spin, of course, now it's like a little angry you know snags in it and they'll spin around.

Joey Leggio: 1:11:12

I take that bait, get rid of it right away. But I also don't like throwing baits in the water. I'll throw them in a bucket, you know. They always feel like I know what's going to happen. I'm going to take a whole dead buck, I'm going to throw it in the water. It's going to be a 50 pound Kobe. It's going to eat and say thank you for the offer and see you later. Bye. So I always feel, even with shark fishing, the same thing. I don't like throwing any bait in the water. There's a fish dead, I just gobbled it up and there's no hook in the bait.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 1:11:45

Yeah, there's no free meals. Yeah, exactly no free meals on my boat, definitely not.

Joey Leggio: 1:11:59

So yeah with that. So if with my rig that's just a treble hook with a tiny little weight, it doesn't matter. You hit them in the gills, you hit them in the head, they're done. They die right away and they just spin to the bottom and that's it. Not saying they won't hit it. But I like to put you know everything in my favor, as much as I can Like the fluorocarbon leaders and stuff and I agree If you're going to be out there on the water putting in that time.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 1:12:20

Make sure you make the best use of that time by fishing the smartest. Now I say that, and anyone who's ever been out fishing with me knows I don't always do it. I'll be out there and I'll have the same gulp bait on for fluke after like two hours. I should really just take the 13 seconds it takes to change this out and get a fresh one on there or just recharge it.

Joey Leggio: 1:12:39

You know you can have that. Get another chinese food container with the juice in it and leave it open. You don't want to spill over the boat, just drop it in. Every time you go up on a drift, drop it in, yeah let it sit and take it out, and it's also good because we're using a bucktail, not a bucktail is all filled with the juice as well right, and I I should do that more and I I don't always do it, but yeah, yeah look, we all have limited time out there, and you may as well make the most out of it by fishing smart and fishing the right way.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 1:13:04

And to your point, a dead bunker getting pulled on a treble does not have anything natural about it no, and when you're sitting? In this and it's spinning and you have that school around it. They're not going to go after that crazy spinning fish. That doesn't look wounded, that looks wrong, right, but you get a, you get a snag bunker. It looks an axe wounded. That's what they're going to go after.

Joey Leggio: 1:13:24

So it's and definitely twitch that rod, you know if it gets back in that school. You haven't got it. Twitch that rod, let it separate. Let it be the only thing that they're going to see the only restaurant in town right now. Basically, all those fish disperse exactly, but and they do they know when it's injured.

Joey Leggio: 1:13:38

Like I said, I witnessed that one. It jumped from one side of school to the next and jumped right on my bait. That was nowhere near it and I saw it the second. I hooked that fish and snagged it. It was like and on it instantly. I was like Holy cow. It was pretty incredible.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 1:13:51

Now I want to go out and start snagging some bunker.

Joey Leggio: 1:13:53

We got a few more weeks here. We got a few more weeks, yeah, yeah.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 1:14:03

I'm yeah. Yeah, I'm gonna have to figure out how to get out there and give it a go. So, ed, before we go, is there anything you wanted to add in?

Joey Leggio: 1:14:07

no, I think we're good, we're all good. Yeah, all right. It was awesome talking with you guys. We'll definitely you guys have up in the long island area.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 1:14:11

Come to me, we'll go fish, we'll have some fun, have some laughs yeah, I'd love to, to come up there and head out with you and, uh, and let's, let's see if we can work something out with that. Um, you know, I just I just like going out and fishing different places with different people. You know, get different experiences and, like you said, I get to learn when I'm out there on the water, I'm a weekend guy.

Joey Leggio: 1:14:33

Now I am officially a weekend warrior.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 1:14:35

There you go. Welcome to the group. I was up until about a month ago and, and now that I'm not working, I'm now a weekday.

Joey Leggio: 1:14:42

Weekday. Yeah, I wish the days were great.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 1:14:45

Yeah, hopefully it's temporary. I'll be back to the weekends in a little bit, but, joey, thank you for coming on Everybody.

Joey Leggio: 1:14:52

Fishing Long Island Fishing.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 1:14:54

Long Island on YouTube. Check it out, check it out on Instagram and everything like that. You definitely want to see these things. These are instructional videos and they're pretty damn entertaining as well. I feel like I'd love to go out and meet some of these guys that you fish with, because you guys have a hell of a good time when you're out there we definitely have fun.

Joey Leggio: 1:15:12

Life is too short not to have fun. You gotta have fun.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 1:15:15

Exactly Next week, we are actually going to have El Nino on.

Joey Leggio: 1:15:22

Oh, that's the fluke guy.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 1:15:24

Yeah, yes, and he's going to be on. We're going to talk a little bit about the late season fluke game because we're getting close to the end of the season. We're going to talk about that, but we're going to talk about a whole lot of other stuff. So he's going to be on on Monday night. So everybody come back next week eight o'clock on Monday and check that out. It'll also be on the podcast following that. For those on the live stream, this will be live on the podcast at midnight on Thursday morning. So I guess Wednesday at midnight, thursday at 12. Oh, 1 AM, this one will be up there. Uh, so give me something to listen to when you're driving down and, uh, getting ready to hit the water for the day. So, joey, thank you again Everyone. We'll catch you next week. So get out there, get on the water, get some tight lines.