Redfish and Black and Red Dogs

I wrapped up my Georgia Florida week today fishing with Hugh Haston and his buddies Randy and David who were all down for the big game tomorrow. As the week has gone by the weather had gotten better and better and today was the best with just a slight breeze, a cool nip in the air and then warm Florida sunshine! We met down at the Sawpit Creek boat ramp and made the quick run up the intercoastal and dipped in to Jackstaff on the last hour of an outgoing tide.

The three anglers were tossing jigs and live shrimp and mud minnows up to the exposed oysters and before long David had "knocked the skunk off" with a hungry Seatrout catch. He followed that up with a Redfish catch then Randy matched it with a Trout catch. We picked up a couple of more fish - Seatrout and Reds then ran through Horsehead and around to some docks at Seymore's Pointe.

With the stern of the boat towards the pilings, the three anglers

tossed their jigs and let them sink  and fished them back slowly. All we found were hungry Mangrove Snapper. After landing a handful of them we crossed over to some shell beds, fished them, caught a Catfish then headed down to Broward Island.

The tide was almost at the bottom when we got there. David's first cast to a sandy bank produced a fat and feisty Redfish.  Randy pulled out another Mangrove, then.....BOOM! Hugh had a hookup that ripped the drag and, FISH ON!  He played it patiently, working it out from the downed tree limbs, got him out into deeper water, then kept the pressure on until the fish was subdued. After a good battle on light tackle spinning gear, we landed a thick 25" Slot sized Redfish. Now that's a nice fish.

Randy and David both went back to the Sandy bank and both pulled out keeper sized Flounder. Both Randy and Hugh caught smaller Reds off the same bank. When the bite slowed we worked down the island a ways then headed back towards the ramp.

Our final stop was at Twin Creeks. The tide had been coming in for a while here and the oyster hump was covered. I switched the anglers to float rigs just to give them a taste of that style of fishing and it paid off with all three fishermen hooking up with a good handful of Seatrout. If we could have kept 14" fish we would have had a "mess"!  One was right at 17" - a keeper. And with that, we called it day, another great one to be fishing here at Amelia Island, Florida.