I Called It A Shark

 Boy was it a hot one today! By the time we got back to the dock I was drenched with sweat, but for mostof the day it was fairly nice and a great one for fishing. I had met Mark Dennis and his friend Greg and Greg's teenagers Jacob and Carter out at the Goffinsville Park boat ramp early. The tide was high but almost at a standstill so we ran over to Pumkpin Hill and began working a grassy bank with float rigs and live shrimp. They were getting a bite or two but it was Carter who "knocked the skunk off" with a feisty Redfish catch. We fished that stretch, then down one more bank before we moved on.

Our next stop was over at Nassauville where we switched to jigs and shrimp and this got the action going. We began to get Mangrove Snapper bites and everyone joined in on the catching. They also caught a couple of small Sea Bass. A number of the Snapper were small but we did get a good handful of legal ones to throw in the box. We broke one of the basic rules of fishing, "don't leave fish to find fish" but we wanted some bigger fish, so we moved on. 

After a short run down to Spanish Drop we set up off a large marsh run out and man was there a lot of bait moving. We picked up a couple of Stingray's then Jacob had a good "bump". He set the hook and worked it expertly to the boat and landed a nice 17" Flounder. Greg battled a Bonnethead Shark for a

few minutes then Jacob picked up another feisty Redfish. When Greg had another strong hookup the big fish dug deep and I mistakenly called it "another Shark". But Greg didn't care and battled it from bow to stern, keeping the pressure on as it went deep behind the boat. I still thought it was a shark until it boiled up between the boat and the bank and we saw that beautiful copper color- Big Redfish On! Greg worked it patiently and soon brought it to the net - a bulky 25.5" Slot Redfish. Boy what a fish.

We had burned through a lot of bait at the Mangrove spot and we eventually ran out, but the bait fish were still at the run out so we dropped back and

tossed a net and got a couple dozen nice finger mullet, then we move up to another drainage and fished it to wrap things up. I had commented that we hadn't seen a Trout earlier so it was nice to see Mark hookup off the stern in deeper water. He played it patiently and brought to the boat a nice keeper sized Seatrout to round out the team's Amelia Island Back Country Slam of Redfish, Flounder and Seatrout and with that, we called it a day, another great one to be fishing here at Amelia Island, Florida.