Fighting Thru the Bait Stealers

Another beautiful morning greeted us today - not so much clear and sunny but, just a tad cooler, some crazy clouds, and a slight breeze to make for a good fishing morning. I had met Allen and Laverne Webb down at the Atlantic Seafood dock and we had a bait well full of live shrimp, mud minnows being in scarce supply. After getting thru the no-wake zone we made a B-line for the Jolley River with plans to fish the "bank" on a tide that had been coming in for about 3 hours. Both Allen and Laverne were tossing float rigs with
the shrimp up near the marsh grass and immediately began to get bites. Unfortunately there were a ton of "bait stealers" - pin fish, small Snapper, Needle fish, etc. that constantly harassed us. But these anglers were ready to fish and we worked thru the junk fish to catch some nice fish. They picked up a Trout or two and landed a couple of the Mangrove Snapper then Allen had a strong hookup and finally, FISH ON! He played the big fish perfectly and patiently and was doing everything right when the big fish burrowed itself up into the grass cut itself off on the oysters, OUCH! That was a nice fish. But we kept on fishing! We move around to the north side of Tiger and here Laverne hooked up and landed a nice keeper sized Flounder. We picked up another smaller Flounder then ran around to fish the outside of Tiger as the tide reached its peak. Again, the bait stealers were a pest but Allen fought through it and landed a nice, hard fighting, keeper sized Black "puppy" Drum. Our last stop was around at Bell River, again we dealt with the small fish, had some good bites, then called it a day, another great one to be out on the water here at Amelia Island, Florida.