Making a Day Out of It

I did two trips today, the first with long time customer Bob Blalock. We met down at the Sawpit Creek boat ramp under beautiful skies and with just a slight breeze and headed up the intercoastal and into Jackstaff and around to a small marsh runout to fish float rigs on the very first of an outgoing tide. I had a bait well full of live shrimp. Bob was making excellent casts but we had  not a nibble.

We bounced over to the bank of Jackstaff and fished it with jigs, hitting the marsh run outs and even though we had some good hard strikes, no takers. Our next stop was over at some dock pilings and Seymore's Pointe where we had a couple of nibbles - then down the Nassau to fish some exposed oysters beds. Again, we had a good bite, some drag ripped, and off it came! Ouch!

We fished some rocks along Seymore's Pointe and Bob weeded through a handful of Mangrove Snapper to get a couple of keeper size, then we made a final stop down at Broward Island. We hadn't fished it long before Bog had a strong bite, a good hookup and after a good battle, he landed a 18" Flounder, big enough to put him in first place in the 2017 Anglers Mark Bragging Rights Tournament -Flounder Category (scroll down the right side of this report for standings).  I think we  had one more good bite but no takers, so we called it a morning, another great one to be out fishing here at Amelia Island, Florida.

After eating a packed lunch and stretching my legs, I met Scott Hamilton at the same boat ramp. This time, we headed straight for Broward Island to fish the first of an incoming tide. The wind had picked up, blowing out of the south east, and the island blocked it perfectly to make for some easy fishing. Unfortunately the fish didn't cooperate, other than one feisty Red that we put in the boat.

We fished it thoroughly then ran back to the Seymore's Pointe area and even though the wind was blocked somewhat, it was still kicking us around pretty good. We fished a couple of docks, had some bites, moved to another and played cat and mouse with some Mangroves. Just as we were about to leave, Scott had a strong hookup and his drag began to rip, FISH ON!  But this fish was in some shallow, oyster infested waters and within seconds it had burrowed down and cut itself off, darn it.

We ran around Seymore's, heading back towards Christopher and ran smack into a wall of thunderstorms and rain - so we did a U-turn and headed back to the boat ramp, lighting chasing us all the way. Still, we had a good few hours of being out on the water here at Amelia Island.