Dinner for 5

Jeff Bailey and Mike Rugen were visiting Amelia Island on business and scheduled a backwater fishing trip on The Anglers Mark. Saturday.  We left the Atlantic Seafood dock at the Fernandina Beach Harbor Marine at 7:30am and boy what a beautiful day it was.  The day started out with a cool mid-50 temperature, no wind, and gradually warmed to the high 70's.  We headed up to Tiger Island to fish the downed logs, starting our 1st pass on the south end, tossing quarter ounce jigs with live shrimp up to the shoreline and bumping them back real slow.  The tide had just started back in and it wasn't long before Mike hooked up and battled a feisty Redfish to the boat.  He picked up another in the Slot a while later so we dropped the anchor and began to fish in earnest.  Mike had the hot rod early and caught another couple of Reds but Jeff persevered and after both anglers lost shrimp to a "nibbler", Jeff hooked it up and pulled in a keeper sized Sheepshead and then added a couple of Redfish.  After the bite slowed we pulled anchor and thinking that we may have missed a Red or two, we went back to the south end of the island and made a pass.  It was a good thing we did because soon Jeff's rod bent and drag ripped, FISH ON!  This Redfish was bigger and was taking drag and Jeff had a battle on his hands.  He played the fish perfectly and after a couple of passes around the stern of the boat, we netted and nice 24" Slot Redfish!  After another Red or two we moved on to the outside of Tiger to fish the now flooding oyster beds with float rigs and live shrimp and the anglers immediately began to catch Seatrout.  Almost every cast produced a bite and every other produced a catch!  These Trout were in the 12"-14" range and we probably could have sat there another couple of hours catching fish, but we were looking for something bigger.  We moved to the south of Rayonier and with the water now completely covering the oysters, were able to fish a grass line where Mike picked up our final Redfish. With that, we called it a day, another great one to be out on Amelia Island waters!