Sunny Windy and Cold

Jim Nelms set up a couple of boats to fish with some of his associates while on business here at Amelia Island so we met today at the City marina with a plan to fish the back waters of Amelia Island. We had sunny skies but the wind was blowing 10-12mph with gusts over 15 and it was in the 50's which made for a tough day to be fishing. But it was sunny and these anglers were up for the challenge so I headed out with Kevin, Ryan and James on my
boat. We made a short run over to Lanceford Creek, fished some flooded oysters to no avail then fished some structure. Although we had a couple of good bites and "fish on" briefly, they threw the hook to be caught another day. We then made a fairly long run (right into the wind) around to Tiger Island to fish the downed logs at the middle of the outgoing tide. It didn't take long for Kevin to find some fish and he put one, two, three feisty Redfish in the boat right off the bat. Ryan jumped in and after a couple of casts, he too
hooked up, played the fish perfectly and landed another feisty Red. We moved up and down the bank and on the south end James got on the board when he found some small, but hungry Seatrout. He got the hang of fishing the jig and shrimp slowly on the bottom and caught five of the Trout. We moved back to the original spot, landed a couple of more feisty Reds, then James had a stronger hookup, FISH ON! He immediately pulled the fish away from the downed logs then patiently played it. We didn't think it was going to be real big but when it began to "pull drag", diving deep a couple of times. After a good battle, James landed a Slot sized 24.5" Redfish! We fished on then James had another strong hookup. This fish turned out to be even bigger! It made even stronger runs, tried to stay down deep, but James kept the pressure on and eventually landed an oversized 28" Redfish! Boy what a fish! We continued to fish the same spot and Kevin got in on the "Slot sized fish" catching when he put a nice 18.5" Red in the boat. What started out as a slow day turned out to be a great day of fishing here at Amelia Island!