First Fish Big Fish

Chris Haines was in town with his friend Linda and took in an Amelia Island back country fishing trip on The Anglers Mark today.  We had postponed the trip from Wednesday when the wind was blowing to 25mph and boy am I glad we did!  We met at the Atlantic Seafood dock in downtown historic Fernandina Beach at 7:30am this morning and headed up to the Tiger inlet to fish a high but outgoing tide with live shrimp under floats.  We had no bites.  We moved to another grass line and had no bites. Ouch.  Our next stop was up in Jolley River with the oysters just beginning to peak.  Chris had tossed his float up near the grass and after it had been there for just a short while we both saw that the float began to move slowly along the grass.  Chris tightened his line and when the float went under, FISH ON!  He played the fish perfectly as the drag on his reel sang, letting the TFO Signature Series Rod do all the work.  After a nice battle Chris brought the fish to the net and we landed a nice Slot 25 1/2" Redfish!  This puts him in first place in the Anglers Mark Bragging Rights Tournament, Redfish category.  We hit a couple of spots in Jolley with no more real bites then made a run to the logs of Tiger Island.  Linda was the first to hookup with a hungry, keeper sized Seatrout.  We dropped an anchor and fished the area as the sun warmed us up and both anglers put a number fo Trout in the boat.  Our next stop was the docks of Lanceford Creek and we weren't disappointed.  Both Chris and Linda caught feisty Redfish and more Seatrout and once had a "double" hookup with Redfish.  Chris also landed a very fat 18" Seatrout (2nd place in the Braggin Rights Tourney)  We fished a few more areas during the day and landed more Trout at each stop then called it a day, another great one to be out on Amelia Island waters!