I AM Lifting!

 

What a beautiful morning we had today when met Rob and Pam Russell up at the Old Town Bait and Tackle ramp! The sun was just coming up and we had clear skies and  just a slight bit of breeze as we headed down Eagans Creek to towards the intercoastal. The tide had been going out for just a couple of hours so we made our way over to a large drainage and began tossing  float rigs with live shrimp to the mouth. Both anglers were getting good casts and good drifts and even though we had a bite or two, we had no takers. 

Our next stop was over at some docks where we switched to jigs and the shrimp and we began to get bites almost immediately. But we weren't getting any fish until Rob did a quick hookset and boated the first fish of the day, a Sheepshead. No wonder we were having out bait stolen!  Now having the hang of Rob wasted no time in hooking up and landing another Sheepshead. He went back for another , reeled his bait back almost to the boat when BAM! Big Fish On!  This fish ripped a bit of drag so I was thinking "Redfish" but when it came to the surface we netted a big 19.25" Seatrout, boy what a fish. 

We eventually made the run up river and fished some more docks and here the duo of anglers really got busy. Pam got on the board with a keeper sized Seatrout, then both anglers put Trout in the boat. Pam had made a good cast, let her jig fall deep when she had the strong hookup. We could tell this was a big fish by the way the rod bent and sure enough she soon landed another Big Trout, this one measuring in at 19.5". It was big but the bigger fish was yet to come!  Rob's rod bent double and his drag began to rip and his line headed East - we hauled in our lines and began chasing the fish as we saw Rob's line getting down to the spool.  I asked him to "lift" the rod up so he could reel down and he exclaiimed, "I AM lifting!"  We chased the fish down the river and I was thinking either a massive Red or one of those Big Ugly Black Drum until a HUGE Ray came flying out of the water at the end of Rob's line...and that ended the battle!

(Note, Pam's Trout put her in 2nd place in the Anglers Mark 2023 Bragging Rights Tournamnt; Rob's fish placed him in 3rd! Scroll down the right side of this report to see standings)

The wind had really picked up and white caps were in the river as we ran between Cumberland and Tyger but we were able to dip into Tyger and fish in comfort and Pam wrapped things up with a Bluefish catch. And with that, we called it a day, another great one to be fishing here at Amelia Island, Florida