Tuesday, June 5, 2018

Saving The Best For Last

The winds died down to almost nothing this morning which made for a great day to get two young anglers out on the Amelia Island back waters. I met Jody Miller and his two young sons Wyatt and William up at the Dee Dee Bartels park boat ramp. After a brief safety orientation, we ran up and around to the backside of Tiger with plans to fish the logs on a first of an incoming tide. It was ideal conditions and these anglers were fishing their jigs and live shrimp expertly, but we had no takers, other than a puny pinfish! Crazy! I would have thought we would have had some nice fish, but that's fishing!

We ran up to the Jolley River, all the way up to Snook Creek, and fished some exposed oyster beds with float rigs and live shrimp and again, no real bites. We dropped back to the mouth of the Jolley, fished a large marsh run out, and I think it was Jody's first cast - his float slowly disappeared and he had a hookup. With the help of his crew, they successfully reeled in a nice 18.5" Flounder, big enough to land them in first place in the Anglers Mark 2018 Bragging Rights Tournament - Flounder Category (scroll down the right side of this report for standings).  We fished on up the bank, had  few nibbles, but no takers.

Our next stop was back around at Tiger, thru Tiger basin, and around to Bell River, again fishing with float rigs. Wyatt picked up a feisty Bonnethead Shark here, but other than that, no real bites.

The final stop was back at the outside of Tiger and with 15 minutes to go in the trip, the fish "catching" heated up considerably! Jody  began to hookup with Seatrout, one after the other. His two young anglers jumped in and helped reel a few in, net a few, release a few and we caught fish until we ran out of bait. Although the first handful of Trout were "shorts", they seemed to get bigger as the catching went on with a few making it into the keeper sized range. It was a great way to wrap up a nice fishing trip here at Amelia Island, Florida.

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