Saturday, March 22, 2014

First Ever Fish is Slot Red

I had fished with Patrick and Michele Verner last November and we had an outstanding trip so today they brought along their two kids, Colette and Patrick for backcountry fishing trip here at Amelia Island.  The skies were still overcast and the wind had picked up a little but we still headed out, this time up Lanceford Creek to fish some flooded oysters on the very last of a a high tide. We had been fishing for only a few minutes when Colette's float disappeared, her rod bent over, and the drag began to sing, FISH ON!  I didn't realize that she had never caught a fish before and you couldn't tell it as she fought the fish patiently.  I noticed that she did everything I advised her to do as she played the fish and we soon netted a nice 24" Slot Redfish!  What a way to start a fishing trip!  But we had no more real bites so we made a run around to the outside of Tiger Island as the tide was going out, and again, had no real bites.  We moved closer to the mouth of Tiger, fished two creek runouts, and still had no bites!  I was beginning to wonder was the fish "catching" going to end on just one nice fish?  NO!  The tide had gotten low so we moved around behind Tiger and this did the trick.  Our first cast with a jig and shrimp got a hookup.  Patrick #2  fought the fish easily and landed a feisty Redfish. For about an hour and a half the Verner anglers caught and landed fish.  There were too many feisty Redfish to count and a whole handful of Seatrout caught with four of them being of keeper size. The catching was so fast and furious we had to rely on "netman" Patrick #2 to get them in the boat!  They put two keeper sized Sheepshead in the boat to round out their Amelia Island Back Country Slam then Colette caught a loan Weakfish to make it a "Grand Slam".  The sun had won out over the clouds, the wind was blocked by the land mass and it ended up being a beautiful day!  We topped it off with a drive by of Cumbeland Island to see the wild horses, then headed in, counting it as another great day to be out on Amelia Island waters!

No comments: