Friday, December 23, 2016

Hand Select Big Bait Best Bait

Boy was it great to be back fishing after a long 12 days off! I had
the pleasure of fishing again withAdam Alfrey, his daughter Rose Marie, his dad Randy, and father-in-law Bill. We met up at the Dee Dee Bartels Park and boat ramp early, and made a run up the Bell River with plans to fish some docks on an outgoing tide. Why so far? The bait shop was a zoo with anglers trying to get in and get bait, and the parking lot had a few dozen boat trailers, so I knew that spots close by would be crowded. The strategy worked - we had the Bell to ourselves and I believe Rose Marie's first cast netted a nice hungry Seatrout, the first fish of the day! We were fishing with live shrimp on jigs on an outgoing tide and we found a good handful of the Trout, but the biggest was just a tad shy of legal size. We ran around and into the Jolley, stopped at the MOA, which unfortunately did not produce, and continued on around to the mouth of the Jolly where we worked the bank slowly, fishing up current. Again, no real bites. The wind had begun to kick up out of the NE so we made a run to Tiger Island and this did the trick! We were mostly out of the wind and we began to get good fish. Six year old Rose figured out that if she picked out the bigger of the shrimp (medium sized) she had more luck catching big fish, and catch them she did! Rose would have a hookup and could reel the big fish all by herself! There was a couple of times where her grandfathers needed help so she would reel those in too! The four anglers caught about 10 Redfish with three of them being Slot Sized fish, and they also had a few 12" Black "puppy" Drum to round out their Amelia Island Back Country Slam. We fished until the baitstealers were all that was biting then we called it a day, another great one to be fishing here at Amelia Island, Florida.

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