Not In My House

 I fished Friday with Mark Caldwell and his son-in-law, a trip set up by Mark's wife Shelly - to get them out on the water and away from the day-to-day grind, and boy did we catch some fish! After picking them up at Goffinsville Park, we headed down the Nassau River and picked a shell bed to fish on the very last of an outgoing tide. It didn't take long before the two anglers were catching fish - Jacks and small but "feisty" Redfish.  

Daniel had a strong hookup and this one was ripping some drag. Daniel played it perfectly, working from the bow back to the stern and then kept the pressure on until he subdued a hard fighting Jack Crevalle.

But up ahead of us we could see a Dolphin move in to the "honey hole" we were heading for and as it began thrashing about, busting Reds for it's breakfast, I thought for sure our fish catching was over. He eventually moved on, working up the river, so we eased onward. We still caught a couple of more smaller Reds but then Mark, after making a perfect cast to the backside of submerged bar, had a fish take his bait with a vengeance and, Big Fish On! It boiled up almost immediately so we knew it was a big Redfish. Mark played it perfectly and after long battle landed an Oversized 31.5" Redfish - big enough to move him into 2nd place in the Anglers Mark 2022 Bragging Rights Tournament-Redfish Category(scroll down the right side of this report for standings). We speculated that this Red was so big he must have told that Dolphin, "not in my house!".

We fished that stretch pretty good, then tried a dock up at Seymore's Pointe, to no avail, then came around and fished between some docks at Nassauville where the two anglers picked up a couple of big keeper sized Mangrove Snapper and a fat keeper sized Weakfish. I had saw on the weather report that the wind was going to pick up thru the morning and sure enough, they got it right!

Our last stop was over at Pumpkin Hill, drifting float rigs and after getting a Jack or two Mark had a hookup and he could tell by the fight that it was a different kind of fish than we had caught all morning -it was digging deep and hard. Needless to say, I was bit surprised to see a keeper sized Black "puppy" Drum come to the net - we haven't seen on in a while! And with that, we called it day and as we headed back to the ramp we counted it as another great day to be fishing here at Amelia Island, Florida.