Rain'n Fish

I fished with the Park boys - Grandad George, his son Matt, and grandson Joseph today, meeting them up at the Dee Dee Bartels Park early this morning for a half day of fishing. We made the short run down to Lanceford Creek and set  up outside a nice run out on a tide that had been going out for a few hours - the oysters were already showing. It may have been the first cast, maybe the second when young Joseph hooked up and "knocked the skunk off" with a nice Seatrout catch on a float rig with live shrimp as bait.  We had a few more Seatrout caught but although the bait fish were making a commotion, we had no other fish.

We moved around and fished some dock pilings and this did the trick. Matt was fishing out of the stern and that seemed to be the spot - he hooked up and expertly landed  an nice keeper sized Black "puppy" Drum.

Grandpa George lurked and.....

Matt put a keeper Seatrout in the boat, then another keeper Puppy Drum, then another keeper Trout...then George hooked up and, Fish On!  He played it perfectly and soon landed a nice 23" Slot Redfish.  We also caught and released a couple of smaller Reds.

The tide had hit bottom so we pulled up the trolling motor and made the run back to Tiger Island to catch that incoming current. Although we didn't get much here we did pick up a feisty Redfish.

With just minutes left in the trip, we decided to make the short run up to the Jolley River and boy did this pay off- even though a couple of rain showers came thru. The trio combined to land two keeper sized Flounder- George landed one that was 18" to squeeze in to 2nd place in the Anglers Mark 2019 Bragging Rights Tournament-Flounder Category (scroll down the right side of this report for standings), then he hooked up and landed a nice22" Slot Red- this one had some "shoulders" and put up a harder fight than his earlier 23"er.  Matt was on the net, Josephe was "coaching" so it was a team effort to land the fish and make it another great day to be fishing here at Amelia Island, Florida.