Monday, July 10, 2017

Tarpon vs Mudminnow

Beautiful day today! It's a good thing those thunderstorms are holding off until the afternoons! I met Steve Frost and his son Blair up at the Eagans Creek boat ramp and we made a short hop over to Tiger Island to catch the last few hours of an incoming tide. You know the best way to "knock the skunk off" is to catch a nice Slot Redifsh? Well that's what Blair did, just a few short minutes into the trip. Tossing mud minnows on jig, Blair hooked up and played him patiently and after a good battle landed a nice 21" Slot fish. He put a few more fish in the boat and I don't think Steve had
quite woken up when BOOM!

I saw Steve's line tighten up and when he set the hook, the big fish headed to deeper water, ripping the drag.  I was thinking "huge Redfish" when out of the water came a high flying 100lb Tarpon! And, fish off - he threw the jig. It happened that quickly - both Steve and I were watching and I'm sure it woke the both of us up!  Steve began to catch fish!

We added a nice 18" Flounder to the box then ran around to Bell River to fish some flooding oysters with float rigs. Steve was on fire. He added a keeper sized Seatrout and another Flounder to the catch. We came back to the outside of Tiger and found that there was a ton of large mullet hanging around. We got a few bites, no taker for a while, then Blair hooked up and landed another keeper sized Flounder.

Our last stop was up at the Jolley River. The tide had started out and we drifted slowly with it, pitching float rigs to the grass, and the two anglers burned through bait, catching one Seatrtout after the other. Although most were in the 14" range, they added one more of keeper size. And with that, we called it a day, another great one to be fishing here at Amelia Island, Florida.

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