Biggest Flounder For The Year

 

We had another Bragging Rights entry burst onto the scene today, the 2nd in consecutive days!  I had met Don Frank and his fishing partner Paul up at the Old Town Bait and Tackle boat ramp and after making our way out of Eagans, we made a short run over and up to the Bell River where we set up to toss float rigs and live shrimp The tide still had about an hour or two to come in. Both anglers were getting good casts and good drifts and had a couple of nibbles and then Paul had a Shark bite that headed west, and kept going!

After moving around to the other side of a flooded oyster point and trying our luck there, we made the short run over to Lanceford Creek and fished a small drainage and here things picked up. Don was going up just beyond a point of grass with his cast and it paid off with two keeper sized Seatrout catches. Then Paul had a hookup and this one was pulling a bit harder and sure enough, after expertly playing it, he landed nice 18" Seatrout.

We then ran thru Tyger Basin around to the outside and set up fishing a point of grass as the tide started
out. The two anglers had a few nibbles but no takers but then we started seeing some rather large tails flapping at us!  I'm pretty sure they were Sheepshead. We got some good casts to them but they just wouldn't eat our shrimp. Then Don made an excellent cast right where they were tailing and when his float slowly went under I knew we had a nice fish. But this fish just stayed deep, didn't thrash much at all, and didn't make any hard runs so I was beginning to wonder and....when it came to the surface we saw that it was a Door Mat Flounder! After netting it and photographs we found that it was right at 20" which move Don securely into First Place in the Anglers Mark 2023 Bragging Rights Tournament-Flounder Category, boy what a fish! (scroll down the right side of this report for standings)

We fished up the Jolley River for a bit, had no real luck, but as we headed back to the ramp we counted it as another great day to be fishing here at Amelia Island, Florida.