Foggy Morning Oversized Redfish

 

I wasn't expecting the fog this morning but as I loaded the boat I knew right off we'd be dealing with it. When I met Mike Stanhope and his adult son Bryce up at the Dee Dee Bartels Park I had me NAV lights on and had plugged in my stern light (I haven't used it in over a year and hoped it would work - it did!) We slowly chugged across the river and back in behind Tiger to fish a tide that had been coming in for about 3 hours. That's not my favorite tide but we still had some bank to cast to.  Both anglers were making fine casts and we worked down the bank, pitching up between the logs and as we got to the other end it was Bryce who "knocked the skunk off" with a fat Seatrout catch.

Just minutes later Mike had followed Bryce in to the mouth of a small drainage and afterwards he said, "he bit it hard the minute it hit bottom", BAM! Big Fish On!  At first I thought I might have set the drag too loose - it was ripping deep and when Mike would work it up a  bit, down it would go again. He had a good long battle and then I realized, no, not a loose drag, but a big oversized Redfish. We eventually netted it, measured it at 29.25", photographed it and released it, boy what a fish, and big enough to move Mike into 1st Place in the Anglers Mark 2022 Bragging Rights Tournament -Redfish Category(scroll down the right side of this report for standings).

We fished float rigs and live shrimp over at Bell River on a grassy point but had  few bites, then ran around to Soap Creek and stayed with the float rigs. Bryce picked up another Trout there. After fishing up Lanceford for a bit we decided to make the run south and after a 20 minute boat ride, were were fishing in Jackstaff Creek. We had a few bites, crossed the creek and switched back to jigs, and got a few pictures of a gaggle of White Pelicans, then ran thru Horsehead to fish at Seymore's Pointe. 

Here we had our most action, now fishing an outgoing tide, set up on a corner. Both anglers had a handful of catches of those Seatrout, one of which was of keeper size.

The sun had come out, the fog was gone, the temperature was up and as we headed back to the dock we counted it as another great day to be fishing hear at Amelia Island, Florida.