Saturday, July 29, 2017

Who'da Thought a Black Drum?

I wrapped my week up fishing today with the Maloff family - Seth and Valeria and their two kids Talia and Asher, meeting them at the Altantic Seafood dock with plans to fish the very last of an outgoing tide. We ran up to Tiger and after a brief orientation, tossed out the first jig and live shrimp and BOOM! Asher had a fish on!  He worked it to the boat and after a valiant battle, landed a nice keeper sized Black "puppy" Drum. I haven't seen one of those in months! After getting some pics and tossing him back (all fish were released today), we got all four anglers fishing and we caught fish for a good hour.

Talia reeled in the biggest fish of the day, a feisty Redfish and all the anglers mixed it up with Mangrove Snapper and saltwater Perch. Seth picked up a nice Red with six spots, Valerie added another Mangrove, then Asher put a fairly nice size Mangrove in the boat.  The bite eventually slowed so we ran up to the Jolly River to fish the "bank".
The wind had picked up (forecasted to get up to 11mph today - kinda aggravating), but it did keep the heat off. We worked the bank slowly, had a bunch of nibbles, but no real bites. Our next stop was up into Snook Creek, hoping for a shark, but again, nibbles but no bites. We made one last run around to Bell River and the land mass blocked the wind, making it very easy to fish the dock pilings.

Within a few short minutes both Asher and Talia had found a "hot spot" and caught Mangrove Snapper one after the other. Seth was patiently fishing forward and he too landed fish, nice feisty Redfish. Catching fish at the last stop made for a great way to wrap up a day of fishing here at Amelia Island, Florida.

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