Can you believe 35 Redfish?

When I met George Bowlin and his friend Ray at the Fernandina Harbor Marina yesterday morning there was a light mist and the wind was "howlin".  We talked about our options and all I could come up with was to head to an island and get out of the westerly wind.  We'd be there all day but hopefully we'd catch some fish.  Boy that was an understatement!  We suffered through the trip across the river but when we arrived we found that most of the wind was blocked so we anchored up and started fishing with live shrimp under floats.  It wasn't long before both anglers were hauling in fish.  I thought, well there's 3, 4, 5 Redfish and then they caught a couple of  keeper sized Seatrout.  Then things got fast and furious with a couple of "double" hookups and George and Ray were catching them as fast as I could get them de-hooked and back into the water!  We were wondering if maybe we would catch at least 20 Redfish, but then the anglers easily surpassed that number and kept on going!  We had a few "keeper" sized Reds, but on the low end of the slot and as the tide changed the count was up around 30 fish!  We made a slight relocation to account for the incoming tide, picked up a few more smaller Reds, then Ray had strong hookup out in deeper water and a Big fish fight on his hands.  This fish was wily and eventually found some structure to break itself off!  OUCH!  But Ray had found the big fish and George followed up with a good, strong hookup and this time he knew to keep the fish headed away from the structure.  He fought the fish like a pro and brought to net a nice 25" Slot Redfish!  Then Ray hooked up with another one and he too played the fish perfectly and landed another 25" Slot Red!  They caught another of those big Reds and added a 18" keeper sized Black Drum to round out the trip with 35 Reds, 2 Seatrout, and one Black Drum!  Boy what a great day of fish catching, especially when we almost canceled the trip!