And Then There Was a Big One

What we do to deserve all this nasty weather? We again had overcast skies and blowing winds when I met Henry Ross and his crew down at Sawpit Creek this morning. In addition to his son Stephen and daughter-in-law Ashley, they also had his granddaughter Mabry along for the catching! We made a run up the Nassau, all the way to Seymore's Point and set up outside a large outflow to drift float rigs and live shrimp. It took a few minutes but the anglers began to get some bites then Ashley had the first hookup and brought to the boat a hungry Seatrout -first fish of the day!  They added a few more Trout with Mabry hauling in a few, with one of them being the first "keeper" fish. 

The wind was blowing but not too bad and as we made our way around to Nassauville we were completely out of the wind and it was almost like fishing on a pond. Now fishing with jigs and shrimp we weren't getting too many bites until Stephen made is way to the bow and went up between some dock pilings and the rock bank. He felt a "thump, thump" then a bit of heaviness and set the hook and started a bonanza of Seatrout catching. Henry went in, hooked up and pulled out the lone Redfish while the rest of the crew caught Trout. They added one more keeper Trout before we moved on. 

We switched back to float rigs and fished a stretch of marsh grass at Back River - I was thinking we might get into some Reds, but no, it was a Seatrout kind of day (so far!). They caught a good handful drifting the floats along the bank, then we moved on. 

After running way up the Nassau we dipped into a creek and began to work a bank of down logs. About 10 minutes into pitching the bank Stephen found the "hot spot" and it was Fish On!  There were many times the jig and shrimp only had time to hit the bottom and BAM! Redfish on. I was netting fish, dehooking, measuring, netting fish, dehooking, measuring over and over again. Mabry was making her on casts and hooking up her own fish = Stephen was pitching in with the net, Ashley was pitching in baiting hooks - it was pandemonium! Most of the Reds were about 17" but every once in a while they caught one that was in the Slot. Once they reached their limit we kept track of the Slot fish caught and totaled 8 for the day. 

I had mentioned to Henry that we normally only caught small fish and small Slot fish in this creek but boy was I surprised when Ashley had a big bite and her drag began to rip. She worked it in, let it run, worked it in, let it run, and eventually expertly played to the boat and big 25.5" Slot Red, the biggest fish of the day, boy what a fish. This group continued to catch fish until we were down to the scrubs of our bait and we left them biting. As we made our long way back to the ramp we counted it as another great day to be fishing here at Amelia Island, Florida.