Drum or Sheepshead?

I had my annual Fernandina Beach Fighting Pirates football team mate fishing trip this past Saturday - made up of myself, Daniel "Bubba" Rhodes, Tony French and Fred Dotson. We all met out at the Goffinsville Park boat ramp on a chilly morning, but it was clear and a beautiful day! Tony and I had tallked about it on the way out to the boat ramp - we had the very first of an incoming tide - do we head over to Broward Island and fish the logs, or hit some dock pilings at Seymore's Pointe? We picked the pilings and headed that way - Good Call!

These anglers were making pinpoint casts to the pilings with jigs and live

shrimp, letting it fall, and keeping their lines tight and it wasn't long before Daniel "knocked the skunk off " when he hooked up with a rod-bending, drag ripping fish, Fish On! Daniel, the Michael Jordan of fishing, talked the fish all the way to the net and landed a big 20" Black "puppy" Drum. From then on, it was all gloves off! Daniel added a fish or two then Tony heated up and began to catch one right after the other. After a brief hazing period of keeping Fred up at the bow, we let him back to the stern and he began to hook up too. As the Black Drum bite slowed, Fred hooked up and landed a big 20" Sheepshead.

 

We were getting nibbles but no takers so when the Drum bite slowed we eased up to the dock and anchored to where we could drop some fiddler crabs down along side them. Again, the fish bite heated up until it was on fire! All four of us took a piling  or fished on one side of he other, and pulled out Sheepshead. I had never really done that but it was fun!

As the tide got up the bite slowed so we moved down to Athens Drop and fished jigs and shrimp to the shell beds. Somewhere in there Tony added a keeper sized Seartrout to the mix. We then ran down to Broward Island, fished a bit in the wind, then headed back to the shelter of Nassauville. We wrapped up the day fishing artificials, again catchinig some Trout, one of which was of keeper size. And with that, we called it a day, another great one to be fishing here at Amelia Island, Florida