PLEASE Turn The Spigot Off!

 

Forget turning the spigot off, someone stick a finger in the dam!  Boy have we had some rain this past week - the streets and fields and driveways and garages are flooding. I was three trips go down the drain before I was able to squeeze in today - cloudy, overcast, but no rain and no real wind to speak of.  I met Jeff and Cindy Patrick up at Old Town Bait and Tackle early and we made the run up and around to the Jolley River to fish a tide that had been going out for a couple of hours. The oysters still were not showing when we dropped the trolling motor and began to ease along the bank and toss float rigs and live shrimp and minnows up current to get good drifts along the marsh grass. It wasn't long before Cindy 'knocked the skunk off" with hungry Seatrout catch. We worked that "bank" good and both she and Jeff put a good handful of small but feisty Redfish in the boat. Finally, though, Cindy had a strong bite and it was taking drag. Cindy kept the pressure on, worked it out from the bank, then played it patiently to land a nice 22" Slot Redfish. All of these fish were a beautiful golden color. 

We finished fishing out that stretch then ran up the river to a large drainage and drifted it with floats.
Again, they caught a good handful of the feisty Reds. At one point something big boiled at the stern of the boat and shortly afterwards Cindy had another one of those drag ripping takes. The big fish took her from bow to stern, from starboard to port, and then it dug deep. Cindy worked it in, let it run, worked it in, let it run, then eventually brought to the net an oversized 27"+ Redfish, boy what a fish!  In addition to the Redfish, Jeff added a fat Seatrout to his catch total. 

We fished Snook Creek for a bit and added one Redfish, moved up and around and fished some exposed oysters with jigs where Jeff put another Red in the boat, then we made our way around to Bell River where we fished some docks. The bite had slowed considerably as the tide reached bottom but Jeff did manage to round out an Amelia Island Back Country Slam when he outsmarted a keeper sized Sheepshead and brought it to the net. And with that, we called it a day, another great one to be fishing here at Amelia Island, Florida.