Kicking Off the Bragging Rights

We had some winds forecast for today, 12mph to begin with and getting up to 17mph as the morning wore on. But it was out of the south so we decided to launch up at Dee Dee Bartels Park. The tide had hit low a little after 7am and after I had met Don Walters and his fishing buddy AlexBournias we made the short run over to Tyger Island and fished the logs on that incoming tide. Unfortunately the water was muddy, kicked up by the winds, and we had no real bites - only nibbles on our live shrimp on a  jig.

We came out from behind Tyger and boy was it choppy! The spray from that south wind was coming over starboard but when we turned the corner we quit getting wet and made our way down the river, turned into Lanceford, and found some dock piling to fish. Here, the two anglers got some bits and Don "knocked the skunk off" with a nice Redfish catch. After fishing one more dock we came back to Soap Creek and fished some shell beds and again, Don found a feisty Redfish.

The wind had picked up so we ran back to Eagans Creek and fished  some docks with slip floats and jigs and shrimp. We hadn't been there for more than 5 minutes and had a hookup. Alex was on the rod - at first I didn't think it was very big, but then it dug deep and bent the rod. Alex kept the pressure on, played it perfectly, and landed a big 21.75" Seatrout - a fish big enough to kick off this years Anglers Mark Bragging Rights Tournament-Seatrout Category! (scroll down the right side of this report for link to standings).

Don was fishing one of the slip floats and let it drift up near a piling and was ready when it disappeared - he lifted his rod and let the circle hook do its job, and Fish On! Don patiently brought it to the boat and landed an 18.99999" Seatrout, another nice fish! We worked up and down that bank, dipping in between docks and caught smaller Trout and a good handful (4) of 11" Sheepshead (garnering an Amelia Island Back Country Slam of Redfish, Seatrout and Sheepshead), then we headed in, counting it as another great day to be fishing here at Amelia Island, Florida.