In Between The Storms

 

You've probably heard, "be careful what you wish for" - just a month ago we were begging for rain and now it seems someone forgot to turn the spigot off! And last night the forecast called for 47% chance of rain today so we thought we'd be getting wet if we fished, but we were going anyway! Luckily when I got up to get the boat ready the forecast had changed to just 15% chance and that held, we didn't get a drop while fishing. 

I had met David Prezzano and his fishing buddies Jay and Mike down at the Sawpit Creek boat ramp with a live well full of shrimp, and before they got there, I had casted for a few dozen finger mullet. We ran over to the intercoastal, up it, and then turned into the Nassau and made our way up for a short bit before turning into the current on the first of an incoming tide. I noted that even though it had been only coming in for an hour, it was already covering the shell. All three anglers began tossing jigs and shrimp and in just a few minutes Mike "knocked the skunk off" when he hooked up and expertly landed a feisty Redfish. He followed that up with a golden colored Whiting catch. 

The trio of anglers caught a couple of small Seatrout, a Catfish, a couple of Jack Crevalle, one of which put up a good battle for David, then Jay had a strange "thump" and, Fish On!  Jay played it patiently, worked it to the boat and when it came to the surface, we saw that it was a big Flounder. He eased it slowly to the net and we brought to the boat a nice 18" Flounder, boy what a fish!

We then made our way down to Pumpkin Hill, fished a stretch with float rigs, then moved around to a point and drifted that. David had gotten a good cast that took his bait along the grass and BAM! Another Big Fish On!  He kept that tension on and worked in, let it run, worked it in and I was thinking "Redfish" but when David got it to the boat and netted, we saw that it was a 20.5" Gator Trout, boy what a fish!

Jay added one more keeper sized Seatrout to the box and although we had a few bites after that, we had no takers. That tide had gotten up to flood stage and the fish must have been up in the marsh. But we had caught some "picture worthy fish", had a few in the box, so as we headed back to the ramp, we counted it as another great day to be fishing here at Amelia Island, Florida.