It looks like the whole week is going to have pretty mornings, and today was one of them. I met Tommy Gray and his grandsons Alex and Henry down at the Sawpit Creek boat ramp. We headed up the intercoastal and dipped into Jackstaff, then into a small creek and began tossing live shrimp under a float on a high tide that had just started out. Just like yesterday, it started slow - Henry had a hookup and brought to the boat hard fighting Jack Crevalle, then he landed a feisty Redfish. We eased along the bank and could see some large wakes and sure enough, Alex, after making an excellent cast to the grass, had his float slowly ease under. He tightened up his line, lifted his rod, and let the circle hook do it's thing and, Fish On! Alex played it expertly, let it run when it wanted to, kept the pressure on, and soon landed a nice Slot Redfish. Then Henry had a strong hookup - another Big Fish one - he fought it to the boat and landed a nice 18" fat Seatrout. Then Alex hooked up and battled another Slot Redfish to the boat.
I don't normally stay at one spot more than about 20-45 minutes but we were getting bites so we made another pass. Henry had a BIG bite, had him on for a while, then the fish tossed the hook - when Henry reeled it in we saw that the hook was bent! We picked up a few more feisty Reds, had few other big bites, caught some keeper Manrove Snapper, and when we left I noted that we had fished that spot for 1 hour and 45 minutes!
Our next stop was around at Seymore's Pointe where we stuck with the float rigs and played cat and mouse with some more Mangroves. All three anglers soon got the hand of it and boated another handful, some of which were of keeper size. Moving down the way, we fished between two docks and again - Mangrove Snapper and then Henry had a good bite and reeled in a keeper sized Flounder. We caught a good handful of smaller Flounder there, too.
The last stop was down at Spanish Drop and just when I thought the heat had run off all of the fish - BAM! The trio of anglers began to get hookups. Alex got hot on the bow of the boat and landed one feisty Redfish after another. Tommy was fishing off the stern and picking up Flounder and Jacks and Seatrout. Henry, fishing mid ship, began to catch the feisty Reds, then he had a good bite, set the hook, and Fish On! Henry kept the pressure on and fought a nice Slot Sized Redfish to the net, to wrap up another great day of fishing here at Amelia Island, Florida.
