Tournament Reds and Then Some

We continued to fish from the south end today when I met Gordon Williford and his sons Burton and Sutton down at the Sawpit Creek boat ramp. I decided to follow yesterday's game plan and fish the flooding oyster beds with float rigs and live shrimp. We set up down from a marsh runout and began to ease along the shore and it wasn't long before Burton "knocked the skunk off" with the fist fish of the day, a nice keeper sized Seatrout. Although we had a couple of more bites, we had no takers, so we bounced down the river and Redfish Spot Tournament!  We continued to fish that area for a while, fished some docks where Burton picked up a Mangrove Snapper, Gordon added the year's first Jack Crevalle, then we headed down to Pumpkin Hill and caught a good handful of keeper sized Trout.  Sutton added a keeper sized Flounder to round out his very own Amelia Island Back Country Slam of Redfish, Seatrout, and Flounder. And with that, we called it a day, another great one to be fishing here at Amelia Island, Florida.
tried it again. We had crept up to Twin Creeks and drifted a few times through their mouths when we all saw something attack some bait over the oysters. Sutton was able to get in there first and within seconds his float slid under and, FISH ON! We knew right off that this was a big fish because it was ripping drag and had no intentions of slowing down. But Sutton kept the pressure on and patiently played the fish. The fish took Sutton to the bow and around the Starboard side and back to the Stern then it go back in the current so we removed the I-Pilot anchor and took up chase. After a good battle Sutton landed a nice 26.75" "Tournament Redfish", boy what a fish. This fish put Sutton tied for 3rd place in the Anglers Mark 2017 Bragging Rights Tournament-Redfish Category(Scroll down right side of this report for standings)  We had drifted way down the river and so we just picked up where we left off and good thing we did because in short order Gordon had a hookup and again, BIG FISH ON!  Gordon said it wasn't very big but I could tell the way it was running towards the shallows that it was big. But it was no challenge for Gordon who worked it in expertly and we soon netted another 26"+ Redfish - and this one had no spots - a sure winner in our