Surprise Surprise!

 I was back to work today after help put on our fishing Tournament over the weekend and boy was it a pretty day to be fishing! I met Dave Burkhart and his fishing buddies Robert and Ed up at the Dee Dee Bartels Park boat ramp and we then headed south down the intercoastal and then dipped into Lanceford Creek to pull up to a marsh runout on a high and incoming tide.

I was feeling pretty confident that we'd be catching fish today after a great week last week and then some good catches coming in to the tournament Saturday, but after fishing that first spot with float rigs and live shrimp for 15 minutes and not getting a nibble, I had a gnawing feeling that this might be the day that we might get "skunked". 

We ran further up into Lansford, turned into Soap and set up at another marsh drainage, fished it for a bit (no bites), then eased along the bank working it with each cast. Finally, these anglers began to get some bites then they caught a few Seatrout, one of which was of keeper size. We moved on around to some docks off of Lanceford and switched to jigs and this did the trick. Dave and Robert hooked up and brought to the boat some keeper sized Black "puppy" Drum and Ed outsmarted four (yes four) Sheepshead! Then Dave went deep, to 15' of water, and had a strong bite and a battle ensued. He played it perfectly and eventually landed a 22" Slot Sized Redfish. Robert also put two undersized and out of season Flounder in the boat, and released.

Our next stop was up Bell River and I think the first cast with a jig produced a Seatrout. Then they were all catching, with a couple of more being of keeper size, and the biggest, right at 17", caught by Ed. Robert went to some structure and had his shrimp picked up and then his drag began to rip, Fish On! This was crazy. The fish ran hard up the river, then down the river, then up the river, then down the river. It kinda boiled up behind the boat and we all thought for sure it was big Redfish but when it finally came to the surface we saw that it was a Striped Bass (and Ed correctly identified it as a Hybrid). The first Striped Bass ever on my boat! Boy what a fish!

We fished Jolley "bank" for a bit, tangled with another big fish, then headed in, counting it as another great day to be fishing here at Amelia Island, Florida.