Big Red at Mother of All

I fished yesterday afternoon with Sherri Lowdenslager, her mother Ona and her friend Tiffany Schintgen  We left the Atlantic Seafood dock at 2pm to fish the backwaters on the last few hours of an outgoing tide. We made a run up to Jolley River and made our first stop at the "bank" and the conditions looked perfect with the oysters exposed. The three anglers were tossing jigs baited with live shrimp and mud minnows and within a few minutes were making excellent casts to the shoreline. But is was to no avail - only bait stealers were eating! We ran further up the river and this time the conditions looked even better as the marsh was blocking the breeze. It still took a while but finally Tiffany had a strong hookup and after a good battle, landed a nice feisty Redfish to get things started. We moved around to the MOA (Mother of All) and within a minute or two we got hookups. All three anglers began to catch fish with both Ona and Sherrie putting nice Redfish in the boat. They also had a couple of hungry Seatrout. Then Tiffany's rod bent double and the drag begag to rip out, FISH ON!  And it was a big one! It was tough to slow this big fish down but Tiffany played it patiently and went from bow to stern, from starboard to port and then back to the bow! But still the big fish was having none of coming to the surface!  Tiffany continued to apply gently pressure and after a long (and somewhat chaotic) battle, landed an oversized 34" Redfish to claim first place in The Anglers Mark 2014 Bragging Rights Tournament -Redfish Category (scroll down right side of this report to see standings). Boy what a fish. After photographs we made sure the big fish was revived and released it to swim off to the deep. The anglers picked up a couple of more Reds and Ona put a nice keeper sized Seatrout in the boat. We made our last stop at Tiger Island, caught a couple, then headed in, counting it as another great day to be fishing Amelia Island waters!