Doormatt Bumps For Bragging Rights

 

We had an outstandingly beautiful morning today when I met Mark Smith and his son Zach out at the Goffinsville Park. I'm always hoping for less wind and today we had it - and began to wish for some breeze before the trip was over!

We ran down the Nassau and pulled up at Twin Creeks to fish float rigs with live shrimp on a tide that had been going out for a few hours. Although there was a bunch of bait movement and shark movement we didn't get much other than a Shark breakoff and a hard fighting Jack Crevalle. After moving down the river we switched to jigs and shrimp and minnows and worked some oyster banks. Both anglers were getting excellent casts and were working their baits effectively, but we had no real bites.

Switching back to float rigs and Seymore's Pointe, the duo outsmarted a handful of Mangrove Snapper, a few of which were of keeper size -Zach had the biggest, measuring right at 12". We fished some dock pilings and again hooked up and

landed some Mangroves. We had a few of those in the box which have some nice fillets, but hardly enough to make a full meal and it looked like that was going to be the bag for the day.

We hit one more spot, fishing between two docks and here we flipped the tables on end!  Mark had went in to a specific spot, let it set with his mud minnow wiggling on an 1/8 jig and, he thought he had hung on  a rock or log and, Fish On! Mark played it patiently to the net and landed a 18'5" Flounder! But the best was yet to come! He went back to the same area and within minutes, "THUMP" - Fish On!  This fish, like the other dug deep, didn't fight a whole lot, but we could tell it was heavy. Again, Mark patiently brought it up to the surface and we saw it was huge Flounder and when netted it measured 22.25" - big enough to move Mark into First Place in the Anglers Mark 2022 Bragging Rights Tournament-Flounder Category, boy what a fish! (Scroll down the right side of this report for link to standings).

We fished out all our bait, adding another Mangrove or two, then we headed back, counting it as another great day to be fishing here at Amelia Island, Florida.