Book Ended By Trout

 I wrapped up my week, and my year, fishing with the Averbuch's -Mark, his son Jared, and his 8yo grandson Max, meeting them down at the Sawpit Creek boat ramp early this morning. And, coincidently, last year my last trip was with the Averbuch's! I even counseled them that last years' trip was going to be hard to top - we had a good trip! 

We made a short run around to the bridge at Sawpit and set up to drift slip floats and live shrimp back to the pilings and it was Max who had the first hookup, yelling "Fish On". He played it perfectly to the boat but it was not to be -the Seatrout threw the hook right at the boat! But Max wasn't to be deterred, and began to get good drifts back and it paid off. - he hooked up another one and this time landed the Trout, a keeper!  From then on he and his Grandad Mark were catching Seatrout off the stern while Jared was left on the bow to try his hand at tossing a DOA plastic shrimp - white with chartreuse tail. He did hook up an land one - another keeper. Mark had drifted long, past the pilings and into the rising sun but he saw his float go under, lifted, and let the circle hook set and Big Fish On!  He worked it slowly to the net as it dug deep a few times but eventually he brought to the net a big 21.25" Gator Trout! Boy what a fish!

Our next stop as up the Nassau where we fished some exposed shell beds on the very last of the outgoing tide with jigs and shrimp. Jared kept the skunk off by hooking up and landing a lone Trout. We continued on up the river, fished a drainage, then continued on to Bubblegum Reef where we tried our hand at losing some jigs to the structure!

After bumping over to Seymore's docks we fished deep for a bit, dropped way back and fished some abandoned pilings, then moved back up a dock after it was vacated by another anglers. Here, Jared had a strong hookup, some drag ripped, then, Fish Off! Ouch. But Jared went back with another excellent cast and again hooked up. This fish was fighting different than the Trout and sure enough, when he brought i to the surface, we saw that it was a nice 17" Sheepshead - another nice catch.

We finished the day down at some docks at Nassauville. I had thought that we had a pretty good day going already, but this was just icing on the cake. From the first cast, Jared was catching Seatrout with the jig an shrimp. Mark got in on the action and caught a few. Max, who was doing an admirable job casting (better than most teen-agers- soon found  his niche and picked up some Seatrout then he was the one that had the strange hookup. This fish was pulling hard but Max was up to the task and battled the fish to the net to land a feisty Redfish - the first one on the boat for a day. Then he teamed up with his Grandfather to battle in another Redfish, this one was digging deep- they tag teamed it and soon landed a fat 24" Slot Red - another great fish. The sun was up, the weather had warmed so as we headed back we counted it as another great day to be fishing here at Amelia Island, Florida.