Friday, July 2, 2010

Banner (rainy) Day of Big Redfish

The hurricane that passed through the Gulf heading to Texas must have thrown the foul weather our way; thunderstorms and rain showers forced us to cancel a Wednesday morning trip and when the forecast called for thunderstorms Wednesday afternoon, we called off Derek and Amy Baileys afternoon trip, too. The couple were in town from Cordele, Georgia and were really looking forward to a fishing trip so we agreed to meet at the south end boat ramp on Thursday afternoon, 4pm, to give it another try. We were met with severe thunderstorms so we waited them out in the parking lot and as they passed at 6pm decided to try to get in a couple of hours of fishing in the light drizzle. Donning ponchos, we headed up river to Jackstaff Creek and began a troll of the oyster beds, exposed almost completely with only about an hour of an outgoing tide left. 50 yards into fishing Derek hooked up with a feisty 16" Redfish and fought it to the boat and net. I thought to myself, "well that's nice, at least we caught a fish in this rain!" Boy was that an understatement (or thought)! Derek and Amy proceeded to catch Redfish almost non-stop for 2 hours, most of them in the slot or even larger, measuring 27", 28" and even 30'er that reached 10lbs!
Amy had one on that probably exceeded even that, fought it for 5-10 minutes, but then it gave a sharp tug and broke itself off. They ended up catching 12 Redfish in the one spot then we moved on to Nassau River to pick up one more slot Redfish. We eased up to the boat ramp just as the sun went down, and counted it as another great (but wet) day to be out on the water!

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