Getting In Some Birthday Fishing

 

I fished with the Millers today, Robert and Lindsey, meeting them down at the Sawpit Creek boat ramp early for a half day of fishing the backwaters of Amelia Island. It was Roberts "birthday trip", and time away from the kids, so we were under pressure to catch some fish!  We ran up the intercoastal, turned into the Nassau, and made a short run to our first stop at Spanish Drop. I had a bunch of live shrimp and had caught a dozen mud minnows at the boat ramp - we went with the minnows and jigs to a large drainage on on outgoing tide. Lindsey had the first bite, played it perfectly, and landed a......Catfish!  But as we worked along the two anglers began to get into some fish and landed one feisty Redfish after another. They were all small, but fun to catch.

We then ran up to some docks at Seymore's Pointe and fished some dock pilings and here they caught a good handful of Mangrove Snapper, a few which were of keeper size. After a nice run down to Pumpkin Hill, we worked a shell lined bank for just a bit, then continued on down to Broward Island where we drifted with the current. I don't think we got but one fish, but it was a nice one! Robert had made a perfect cast to the bank and I saw that he might be "hung up", but he pulled it loose and, BAM! Fish On!  Robert played it patiently and brought to the net a nice Slot Sized 21" Redfish. 

We fished the rest of Broward and with time running out, made the run back to Seymore's where we set up  along a shell bank with the tide now coming in and drifted float rigs with live shrimp. Both Lindsey and Robert were getting excellent drifts. Robert had gone long and when we both saw his float slowly go under an move against the current, Robert tightened down, lifted his rod and let the circle hook do its thing and, another Fish On!  As Robert thought this fish I was expecting a nice Seatrout or Jack Crevalle but when he got it to the boat to be netted we saw it was another Slot Redfish - what a great way to wrap up a fishing trip here at Amelia Island, Florida.