No Bait Drum

I fished this morning with Arthur Grace, his son Conner and his friend Lee, meeting them down at the Sawpit Creek boat ramp on a tide that still had a few hours to bottom. We made a quick run around to the old bridge at Sawpit and set up behind it, fishing jigs out into the deeper water, baited with live shrimp. I haven't fished this area in years but I had heard they were getting Trout. We didn't.

After a brief run in with a sandbar, we made the run up the  Nassau River to some docks at Seymore's Pointe. The March winds had already
picked up so the docks were a welcoming calm.  I had two of the anglers tossing jigs but I planned to set one up with a slip float rig to drift behind the boat. I had just dropped it over the side of the boat to check for the bobber stopper depth with no bait on the hook when I felt a tug and, Fish On!   I handed the rod to Lee who expertly worked it to the surface and landed a nice keeper sized Black Drum!  But that was about all we got so we moved on.

The next stop was down at Broward Island and again we had somewhat of a wind block. All three anglers began to get nibbles, a bite, and finally we began to put a couple of Seatrout in the boat. They were down deep and the bite was so subtle you had to really be on you toes to hook one up.  We fished the island with just minutes left in the trip, then ran back, but made another stop to fish the Seymore docks, this time on an incoming tide and I believe that made a difference.

Conner hooked up and landed a feisty Redfish and just seconds later, Lee put another keeper sized Black Drum in the boat. Then Conner wrapped things up with a final Seatrout  catch. Although we had to find places to be out of the wind, the sun was out, we caught a few, and it was another great day to be fishing here at Amelia Island, Florida.