Wednesday, July 19, 2017

30 Plus Fish

For three weeks now I've been able to answer the question, "Are you catching fish?" with a resounding YES! But there's not a whole lot of size to them. The same held true for today's fishing trip with Joanne and Steve Shap and their two grandkids Raymond and Lilly. I picked them up at the Oyster Bay Yacht Club and we motored around to Bell River to fish an oyster outcrop on an outgoing tide  - the oysters were already showing.  We were pitching float rigs and mud minnows but had no bites at all.

After running thru Tiger and around to the outside of the island, we again setup along some oyster beds and BAM! We started catching fish. Young Raymond was on fire, catching one feisty Redfish after the other. Joanne joined in and she too was putting fish in the boat with the help from Lilly. Steve picked up a couple if he could squeeze in a cast to the hot spot. These anglers also caught a few hard fighting Jack Crevalle and then Raymond had a good bite and this fish seemed bigger, and it was! He played it perfectly and soon landed a nice 17" Flounder.

Lilly had taken over First Mate duties and was hand delivering mud minnows when needed. She also was best Net Girl, netting the feisty Reds as they came to the boat. The bite eventually slowed so we ran around and up to the Jolley River, switched to jigs and added another handful of Redfish to the catch.   We made a brief stop at the MOA, caught a nice Catfish, then made our final stop across the river where Raymond finished up with a hungry Seatrout to round out his personal Amelia Island Back Country Slam of Redfish, Flounder and Seatrout. And with that, we called it a day, another great one to be fishing here at Amelia Island, Florida.

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