Down To The Last Minnow

I wrapped my week up fishing out of the south end, meeting Dale Bullard and his son-in-law Jacob at the Sawpit Creek boat ramp. We had a bait well of live shrimp and mud minnows ready to go when we hit our first stop along some oysters beds in the Nassau River. The tide still had a few hours to go out, but with the oysters showing, these two anglers were able to fish the bank pretty good. We'd been working the bank for about 15 minutes and I was beginning to wonder when Dale had a strong bite and, FISH ON!

Dale played it perfectly, with his drag singing and after a good battle landed  a nice Slot sized Redfish. And moments later, Jacob hooked up and again, FISH ON! Jacob worked it patiently to the boat and we landed another Slot Red.  Now that's the way to knock the skunk off.

We continued to fish the bank, picked up a couple of smaller fish, moved up to a marsh runout and caught a handful of small "rat"

Reds and an "almost legal" Black Drum. We ran up closer to Seymore's Pointe, eased  up to some more oysters and began to work them slowly. Both Dale and I had strong bites, drags that ripped and, FISH OFF! Ouch! We bounced over and fished some docks, had some nibbles, then BOOM! We had another good hookup and landed another Slot Redfish. After picking up a small Mangrove Snapper we ran down to Broward Island and boy did it look good!

The water looked like Coca Cola, the bait was running and I thought surely we'd get some fish. But nope, no real bites other than one small Flounder.  We came further north of Broward, worked a bank, and picked up one Stingray that I hoped was going to be a big Flounder. Our time was running out, along with the bait, so we decided to run back to where we started this morning and fish the first of an incoming tide.

And this did the trick. We only had a handful of shrimp and few minnows. When Dale hooked up with a big Jack Crevalle I thought we had a Red, but nope, just a Jack. Then Jacob hooked up. This big fish stayed up near the oysters - a Redfish! Jacob again played the big fish perfectly and soon landed another Slot Redfish. We were down to a couple of shrimp and a one minnow and Dale went with the minnow and it paid off! BOOM! BIG FISH ON!  This fish wasn't coming in for a while. But Dale was patient and kept the pressure on and eventually subdued the beast, a nice 25" Slot Redfish. Now that's the way to wrap up another great day of fishing here at Amelia Island, Florida!