I wrapped my week up - have a great 4th of July weekend! Today I fished with the Braynard family, Scott and Jennifer and their adult sons Steve and David. We met early down at the Sawpit Creek boat ramp and made a quick run up the intracoastal and up the Nassau on slick water with clear skies - we had only a nice slight breeze all day. Our first stop was at Spanish Drop where we turned into the current and began to toss jigs and mud minnows to the still exposed shell bank. As we worked along we got a nibble or two then Scott hauled in a mangy Catfish! But he followed that up with a good hookup and successfully played a keeper sized Flounder to the boat. David followed that up with a keeper Flounder of his own and Scott finished the spot off with a Jack Crevalle battle to the net.
We bounced own the bank, hitting drainages and drifting past them, finally switching to float rigs and the mud minnows, but we had limited success.
Our next stop was down at Pumpkin Hill and this paid off with some good action. David went long with a float and picked up a hard fighting Flounder then Scott caught and expertly played a big 18" Seatrout. On queue, David drifted the grass and he too caught nice keeper sized Seatrout. Then it was Jennifers turn for the big battle - she had a strong hookup and that drag was ripping - she fought it valiantly as it made a couple of hard dashes, but she kept the pressure on and lifted it up, reeled it down, lifted it up and reeled it down until she brought the beast to the net - a nice Jack Crevalle.
We had some good bites here and there - Steve had a good drift really close the grass and caught the first Redfish of the day, a juvenile, but then he went long with a drift and BAM! Big fish on! He was so far back there that I thought for sure he'd get spooled quickly so we hit the trolling motor in high gear in reverse and back to it, all the while with Steve cranking in the slack as we went. We it "anchor" and let Steve battle the fish to the boat, a big 25.25" Redfish, boy what a fish. We had some good action at a couple of spots, had beautiful weather,
had seen birds, dolphin, and manatee, so as we headed back to the ramp we counted it as another great day to be fishing here at Amelia Island, Florida.
