Dave's Day Out

 

We had a high tide today when I met Roger Pickett and his fishing partner David. I  met them up at the Dee Dee Bartels Park boat ramp and we headed over to the outside of Tiger Island and set up to fish Cajun Thunder float rigs with live shrimp, up by the marsh grass. Both anglers were making excellent casts as we worked the bank, but we had no takers. We then ran around and fished some marsh in Soap Creek to no avail. The tide was still up when we worked our way over into Lanceford Creek and again, no fish! I was beginning to wonder. 

After making a short run back to Eagans Creek, the tide had fallen a bit so we switched to jigs and shrimp and with the lower tide, this did the trick. David had a strong hookup and worked to the boat a nice feisty Redfish. He picked up another or two, then we had a Black Drum bite and Roger brought it to the boat - a keeper. We continued to fish that dock as the tide drop and did pretty good, catching feisty Reds, a couple of the "puppy" Drum, and Roger added a Seatrout to the mix. When things slowed we moved around to the other side and the move paid off. The duo landed a couple of the smaller Redfish, then David reeled in a keeper. Then he had a strong hookup and, Fish On! We could tell this fish was big - the drag was ripping and it was hanging on the bottom. But David was up to the challenge and subdued the fish and landed a big 23"  6lb+ Drum, boy what a fish!

We tried another dock for just a bit, then made the long run over to Bell River and up to some docks.
  We stayed with the jigs and shrimp and had a good flurry of Seatrout catches, all in the 14" range. When we ran low on bait we tried some artificial jigs and they caught fish too. Although we didn't get any Trout keepers, Roger and Dave each had an Amelia Island Back Country Slam of Redfish, Seatrout and Black Drum so we counted it as another great day to be fishing here at Amelia Island, Florida.