Saturday, July 16, 2016

Fast Start, Quality Finish

I wrapped up my week today with a great fishing trip with Mike Snider, his son Ethan, and his father Danny. It was a beautiful day - when we got to the Jolley River I commented that it was so calm it was almost like fishing on a pond! We started working a flooded marsh line with float rigs baited with live shrimp and mud minnows. The tide had been going out for about 30 minutes and it was perfect conditions. And the anglers began to get bites right off, with both Mike and young Ethan fending off the "baitstealers" to
pick up fish. Mike was reeling in the small but feisty Redfish and Ethan was hooking up with hungry Seatrout, one of which was of keeper size. Danny was getting bites and persisted and soon got in on the action, landing a nice fat Trout of his own, then he went for variety and put a high flying Ladyfish in the boat and then a feisty Bluefish. It was fast and furious for a while with a "double" catch in there somewhere.  We moved on up to "Snook Creek", fished another grass line, then we move in to the creek and switched to jigs. They landed a small pinfish or two and a small Croaker, then
we got out the cast net and picked up some more bait. Our next and final stop was around at Bell River, fishing some docks, and right off Mike hooked up with a  Flounder. We bounced up and down the docks and found a keeper sized Black "puppy" Drum which Ethan expertly reeled in. We continued to fish, had bites, then had a strong hookup and, FISH ON! Ethan was on the rod and despite the coaching from Dad, Grandad and the Guide, he patiently reeled in a nice 22" Slot Redfish! Danny went back to the same spot and in  short while had a very good bite. He and Ethan teamed up on this one and reeled in the biggest Trout of the day. It had gotten real hot and we were at the bottom of our bait inventory, so we called it a day, another great one to be fishing here at Amelia Island, Florida.

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