Gotta Squeeze The Tail

We had another beautiful day today!  I had met Alex and Laura Winter out at the Goffinsville Park boat ramp with plans to celebrate Laura's birthday with a Amelia Island back country fishing trip! We made a short run over to the Pumpkin Hill on a high tide that was still coming in. The two anglers went with the float rigs and it didn't take long before Laura had "knocked the skunk off" when she caught and landed a hungry Seatrout. We all thought "here we go" but that was about it. But we moved down just a bit and set up in a little cove and began to catch more Trout, one or two were of "keeper" size.

We then moved around the corner and fished a flooded grassy island and again had good luck catching Trout. Laura put the biggest in  the boat, one that measured just shy of 17".

Our next stop was around at a large outflow near some docks at Seymore's Pointe. The tide had started out here - we were still using float rigs- but we didn't have a single bite. We fished a

short stretch of marsh grass in between two docks, then moved on.

After running thru Horsehead to the mouth of Jackstaff, then up in a creek, we stayed with the floats and worked a bank, but again,  no real bites.

Our last stretch of bank we fished we switched to 1/8oz jigs and baited them both with live shrimp or mud minnows and this did the trick. Laura was on the bow and Alex was on the stern and they both began to hookup with Seatrout, and caught them pretty regularly. One of those was of keeper size. Just as I was thinking what we'd go another day without a Redfish, BOOM! We had a hookup!  Later Alex said that he had tossed his bait up near the shore, kept his line tight, and when he felt the fish "bumping" it, he set the hook, and Fish On!  We knew right off that this was a big fish. It was ripping drag and heading East! But Alex kept the pressure on, played it perfectly as it went around the engine, then brought it to the net. 

There was some debate as to whether it might make it into the Slot but after squeezing the tail it put the fish well over 28" so after some photographs it was released to swim away.  We continued working the bank, caught another couple of Trout, battled with one more big fish that eventually thru the hook, then we called it a day, another great one to be fishing here at Amelia Island, Florida.