Amelia Island Birthday Treat

We had a beautiful day today, albeit somewhat windy when I met Kim Kowal and her husband Mark down at the Sawpit Creek boat ramp. Kim was surprising Mark with a birthday fishing trip - he didn't know exactly what the gift was until they walked down to the ramp and I greeted them! Now THAT's a birthday surprise! It was blowing about 8-10 already with a forecast of 12mph to come so we headed up the Nassau River and got in behind a land mass at Seymore's Pointe and luckily we had a good tide - the last few
hours of an outgoing tide. We set up current of some dock pilings and Mark began pitching his jig and shrimp combo to their bases and it wasn't long before he had a hookup! He played the fish perfectly and within minutes we had the skunk off the boat with a feisty Redfish. He picked up one more then BOOM! Bigger fish on! This one had the "shoulders" to get back into the pilings but Mark kept the pressure on, eased him out, then wore him down patiently and landed  a nice 22" Slot sized Redfish. And after that? No fish. We moved on down the docks and picked up a Redfish or two, fished another dock and picked up a hungry Seatrout, then hit the initial dock before we left and when Mark put his bait next to a piling it was immediately hit and, another big fish on. He worked it to the boat and soon landed another Slot Redfish. He caught another smaller Red then we ran down to fish Broward Island thinking the tide was about to hit bottom. Nope. The south wind was really pushing the water - it was muddy and rushing out - but we fished it anyway, but had no luck. We went back and fished some docks south of Goffinsville, had no bites, and wrapped things up at Bubblegum Reef. The sun was going down, the fish had quit biting, but as we headed in, we counted it as another great day to be fishing here at Amelia Island, Florida.