Big Birthday Red

Rick Alexander treated his son Danny to a birthday fishing trip this afternoon on The Anglers Mark, fishing the Amelia Island backwaters.  We met at the Atlantic Seafood dock in downtown Fernandina Beach and headed north up the river with a livewell full of live shrimp.  The tide had just peaked at its highest so we were using float rigs with about a 3' leader to fish over the flooded oyster beds.  At our first stop outside of Tiger Island the anglers had almost non-stop action, catching Snapper, a hungry Seatrout and "bait stealers".  We move around to Manatee Cove and again found Snapper and bait stealers.   They were fun to catch but we were looking for bigger fish so we headed up to the Jolley River to fish the shoreline.  We hadn't gone far when Danny's float made a strong disappearance!  He lifted the rod tip firmly and, FISH ON!  This fish was definitely bigger than our earlier catches and after playing the fish perfectly, Danny soon landed a nice, keeper sized Trout!  we fished Jolley Bank until a creek runout, anchored for awhile, had a few bites, then decided to make another pass of the Bank, and I'm glad we did!  After only a few minutes, Danny's float again surged under and this time there was large roll where we lost site of the float,  a BIG Red!  Danny's drag ripped out, but he kept the pressure on and slowly worked the fish to the boat.  With his dad manning the net, they landed the big 23" Slot Redfish for Danny's personal biggest fish to date!  We continued to fish and eventually switched to jigs when the oysters began to show and Rick landed a few more Trout and a hard fighting puppy Drum to round out the anglers Amelia Island Back Country Slam.  After hitting one more spot where Rick picked up a Seatrout on a Temptation Bait Ribbed Shrimp (brown), we called it day, another great one to be out on Amelia Island waters!