Amelia Island Slam on a Fly

I think Mark Thibodeau and I were the only ones out fishing today. It was a little cooler than the what the forecast called for, at least as windy as predicted, and it stayed foggy the whole day. But Mark was game and I was ready to fish the Amelia Island back waters with the long fly rod. As it turned out, Mark was one of the better fly casters that I've had all year and it paid off because you needed to have a good cast to catch fish today. Our first stop on the first of an outgoing tide, up Bell River, turned out to be not so good of a call. We fished some flooded oyster beds briefly then headed over
to Eagans Creek to fish some marsh run outs. It took a while but Mark figured out that he could let and intermediate line, cast upcurrent, sink down thru the water column, and find a Seatrout. He hooked up with the first one with a black Troy James Fly red dumbell eyes and then picked up a few more on different paterns, including a Trout Candy and a baitfish Clouser pattern. After fishing the area until the water got out of the grass, we made a run thru the fog up and over to fish the logs of Tiger Island. The wind
was blocked here and the conditions were right, but Mark had to work for fish. He finally had a good hookup and a strange fight, and after a good battle, landed a nice 18" keeper sized Flounder.  A little while later, from the same spot, Mark put a feisty Redfish in the boat to round out his Amelia Island Back Country Slam of Seatrout, Flounder and Redfish. We fished the bank thoroughly then made a run back to Bell River, fished an outflow, but again were bucked by wind, then made a run back to Eagans Creek to fish some dock pilings. And boy did things heat up! Mark was tossing a shrimp-like pattern on is sinking tip line in about 5 foot of water and nailing feisty Redfish, one after the other. Then he had a stronger hookup but the big fish was having nothing to do with coming out from around the pilings and BAP, broke itself off. This happened a second time but on the third the big fish made the mistake of running away from the docks and Mark had him! He played the fish perfectly and patiently and after a good battle landed a big 23" Slot Redfish! After putting one more Slot fish of the same size and a good handful of smaller Reds, we called it a day,m another great one to be fishing Amelia Island waters!