Fishing The NSFA Tournament with High School Buddies

 We've been getting together for about the last 5 years - my High School football teammates and yesterday
we fished the NSFA Rodeo Tournament. Tony French played linebacker our Senior year, Daniel "bubba" Rhodes anchored one side of the line at offensive tackle while I anchored the other side at tackle. A few years ago we lost teammate Raymond Keen who had fished with a couple of those years prior and we always miss him. 

We launched early out at Goffinsville Park and made a quick run over to Spanish Drop on the Nassau River and began pitching jigs and live shrimp and mud minnows. We hit a bunch of spots that day - we fished from 6:30am to about 4pm and at least two of us were complaining about sore knees and ankles as the day wore on. Tony "knocked the skunk off" when he caught a keeper sized Flounder, and I followed that up later with another keeper Flounder. Neither were big enough to warrant running them to check in, but they did go in the box!

We fished a few spots up and down Nassau River and picked up a good amount of small Redfish and a couple of Slot sized Reds. One of those that Dan caught was of legal size and had 4 Spots, again, probably not enough  to run to check in. We ran thru Horsehead and fished Jackstaff "bank" and caught another handful of Reds, and Jacks. Throughout the day we battled a couple of Sharks to the boat and released. Fishing back in the Nassau we landed more Redfish  on float rigs now, over the oyster beds. We ended up catching 4 Slot Reds for the day - Dan had the biggest at 25". We had to release two due to bag limits.

Also caught  were TWO oversized Redfish! The first ended up measuring at 27.5", just a half inch over the size limit. You can imagine the excitement when you know you've got a BIG Redfish on in a Tournament. That happened twice - the 2nd was FAT and measured well about he Slot at 29.5". Oh well - we had a great time catching up and reminiscing about growing up and going to school at FBHS so as we headed back to the ramp we counted as another great day to be fishing here at Amelia Island, Florida.