Bringing Them To The Boat

I was fishing north this morning, meeting Chris Jones, his wife Beth and their son Alex up at the Dee Dee Bartels Park boat ramp. The tide had just hit bottom so we buzzed over to the back side of Tiger and fished the logs with jigs and live shrimp on the very first of an incoming tide. We worked the logs thoroughly but all we got was a small Mangrove Snapper that Chris hooked up with.

We then ran around to Jolley River, and fished the bank. The trio picked up a few small Seatrout then Beth had a strong hookup. She patiently worked it to the boat and landed a nice keeper sized 18" Seatrout. We picked up one or two more smaller trout before we moved on.

Our next stop was up just past Snook Creek. Alex was fishing a float out the stern but Beth and Chris stayed with the jig rod. Chris had a bite - it didn't fight much, but ran to the
boat, but then it powered deep and Chris had a fight on his hands. He played it perfectly though and after a good battle brought to the net a hard fighting Bonnethead Shark.

After fishing the outside of Tiger for just a brief bit, we came back inside of Tiger, fished a cut, then continued on around to Bell River and set up along side a pointe of grass that was flooding with water. This did the trick - we finally had some steady action. There were a couple of times that these anglers had some nice fish on but they'd throw the hook. But Beth had "stepped her game up" and when she had a hookup she kept the pressure on, fought a brief battle, then landed a big 21.25" Seatrout, boy what a fish! This fish moved Beth into 3rd place in the Angler's Mark 2020 Bragging Rights Tournament-Seatrout Category(scroll down the right side of this report for standings). We fished a bit longer, landed a trout or two, then called it a day, another great one to be fishing here at Amelia Island, Florida.