Another New Guy

[nocobia]

Hello everyone. Great site.

Quick bio before I ask a few questions. I grew up in Raleigh and spent much of my time fishing the Trent river in New Bern and the salt mostly around Emerald Isle, Atlantic Beach, Morehead City areas. I moved to California in 1999 and currently live and fish in San Diego. Before moving here, I had started getting into cobia fishing between 1994 and 1999. We mostly fished Beaufort inlet and The Hook. Although we had some luck at first, we spent most of our time "missing" the cobia...hence my username. I return to N.C. usually twice per year and try and get in some saltwater fishing each time. I will be back this Memorial Day for the Coca-Cola 600 (9 years now) and plan to fish at least 3 times down at the coast.

Does anyone have some good tips for catching cobia? Tide preferences? Chumming? Moon phases? Temperature preferences? Drifting vs. anchoring? Live bait or cut bait? The ones we caught in 1995 were on live hogfish with a 5' wire leader near buoys in about 40 feet of water. Since then it's been nothing but lost fish and plenty of skates and sea turtles.
Thanks.