Herculean Effort

It was a dark and gloomy....morning...but the winds of the last two days had died down and the rain was offshore so Bob and William Blalock and I headed out from the Dee Dee Bartels Park boat ramp and over to the outside of Tiger Island to fish the last of a high and incoming tide. Bob was tossing live shrimp under a float and William was pitching a topwater Zara Spook Jr (red head, white body). The two anglers worked the grass line - Bob got a bunch of nibbles and William had zero "pops" until finally, BOOM! He had a vicious strike, a hookup, and skunk off the boat with a nice Seatrout. But there just
weren't any fish to be had.

We ran thru Tiger Basin and around to Bell River and set up at a point of grass and this did the trick Both anglers were fishing the float rigs and they began to get a Seatrout here, and a Seatrout there. And another Trout. And another Trout. They gradually began to build a good "mess 'o fish". 

After running over and then up into the Lanceford Creek, we found nice grass patch to fish and again, the duo put fish in the boat with every once in a while one being a keeper sized fish. We also picked up a first couple of Reds there as the tide started out.

Our final stop was over in Soap Creek and things got crazy in a hurry! Both William and Bob put fish in the boat - Trout and Red's, then Bob had a strong hookup...but it was on the other side if a grassy island, and as it turned out, on the other side of an oyster bed! The fish ran up a slew then buried itself in the grass and stuck. We moved in closer with the boat and Bob leaned out and pulled the fish loose and the battle was on again. After a herculean effort, Bob worked the fish to the boat and landed a nice 24" Slot Redfish.

We ran out of live bait catching fish then switched to artificials and continued to catch fish. Bob was using a natural colored/chartreuse tail weighted shrimp under his float and William caught fish on a rootbeer grub with chartreuse tail and also a black spoon with rootbeer grub, all of which made for a great way to end a day of fishing here at Amelia Island, Florida.