Weird On The Water

It was kinda weird out fishing this morning - the skies stayed overcast the entire day, ominous storm clouds surrounded us while 10mph winds kept a breeze flowing. But my guests - Bob Lalli and his two adult sons Mark and Scott were game to fish so we had met down at the Sawpit Creek boat ramp. We ran up the Middle River and around to Pumpkin Hill with plans to fish the very last few minutes of an incoming tide.  I think the fish were taking a break - we fed the bait stealers one shrimp after another!  But we stayed with it, got a few strong bites, then Mark put a feisty Bonnethead Shark in the boat.

We eased around the corner, fed some more bait stealers (the bait shop was all out of mud minnows today), then it was Scott's turn to tangle with a Bonnethead. Bob put a Seatrout in the boat to officially "knock the skunk off".   We then ran down to Twin Creeks and pt out a minnow trap, then back to Seymore's Pointe and played with some Mangrove Snapper. We caught a few but all were undersized and again, we were blowing thru our bait, so we moved on. We fished Athens Drop and picked up another Trout or two, and a couple of feisty Redfish then we stopped in to pick up our minnow trap. There were only two minnows in the trap but I was able to cast net a good handful of perfect size finger Mullet.

Our next stop was up at some docks at Seymore's Pointe. These anglers were making excellent casts and it wasn't long before it paid off. Scott had baited with one of the finger mullet and had put it up near the pilings. When he hooked up and the drag began to sing we new it was a big fish. Scott put some pressure on, got the fish out away from the pilings then patiently played it to the net. I had to measure it a couple of times to make sure it squeezed in under the Slot limit of 27" - boy what a fish!

We had a few more bites, picked up a couple of Mangroves, another feisty Red, and a nice Seatrout before we called it a day. The skies were still cloudy but we had only had a few rain drops so we counted it as another great day to be fishing here at Amelia Island, Florida.