First Fish Ever for Two Anglers

An outstandingly beautiful day greeted us this morning for a fun day of fishing the backwaters of Amelia Island.  I had scheduled to meet Barbara Montressor and her friend Christine Knoblauch down at the Fernandina Beach city marina.  The ladies had donated the fishing trip for auction to raise money for United Way back at their work and the winners of the auction, David and Cecelia, had won the trip and were coming to fish as a group - a great way to "team" build!  We headed north to the Jolley River with plans to fish the exposed oyster banks with jigs and live shrimp or mud

minnows.  After the anglers knocked the rust off they began to get their casts up near the oysters and it wasn't long before they began to get bites.  Christine got the "skunk off" the boat by landing a nice hungry Seatrout  - her first caught fish ever, then Cecelia followed that up with a high flying Ladyfish, her first fish ever caught, too!  David was making excellent casts to the bank and he soon had a hookup and good battle with a Black "puppy" Drum, which he landed.   We made our second stop at the logs behind Tiger and even though all the anglers were getting bites and the tide was right,

we had  no hook ups!  Our final stop was outside of Tiger Island and here the action really heated up.  Cecelia landed a Ladyfish then Barbara hooked and landed a Seatrout.  Then all of the group were catching Ladyfish.  Time was running short when David had a hookup but this time his rod bent double and his line began to zip out, FISH ON!  This big fish ran under the boat and was heading south!  But David applied the pressure, went to the stern of the boat and managed to turn the beast.  The fish took him from bow to stern, from port to starboard then back to the bow but

it was no match for David and after long battle we were able to land the Bonnethead Shark for pictures and release!  With that, we called it a day, another great one to be fishing Amelia Island waters.