Down To The Wire

 

We've got some wind kicking here at Amelia Island! When I spoke to Andew Perrin last evening I warned him that we'd be bucking the wind today if they wanted to give it a try. But he and his son Sam were willing to brave the wind so we met up at Old Town Bait and Tackle and after easing out of Eagans Creek we already had 15mph winds. We made our way over to Lanceford and to Soap Creek and fished a drainage with the winds at our back, tossing float rigs with live shrimp on a high tide that had reached it's peak. I don't think we had a nibble. 

We moved around the corner, fished a grassy island, then came back and fished between a couple of docks with the floats. We may have had a bobber go under a couple of times - it was hard to tell with the chop! After running thru that chop, back towards Fernandina, we turned down the intercoastal and made our way down the river to fish some structure with jigs down on the bottom. Here we did get some bites here and if we were keeping score, the fish won!  Sam did manage to put two nice keeper sized Mangrove Snapper in the boat.

After fishing back around Piney Island with only a few nibbles to show for it, we made our way back to Fernandina and found a somewhat sheltered spot out of the wind and went back to the float rigs with just short time to fish. Sam had made an excellent cast up near some rocks when his float disappeared - he tightened up and let the circle hook set and Fish On!  Sam played it expertly, battled it when it ran, and in a short while landed a nice 20" Slot Redfish. And only minutes later it was Andrew's turn to battle the big fish. His was ripping drag and digging down river then it would turn and head for the structure. Andrew would work it out, it'd go deep, then head back for the structure. Andrew stayed patient, worked it out and eventually landed an Oversized 27.5" Redfish, boy what a fish!  We photographed and tagged and released this fish, see Grey Fish Tag Research  and enter GFR62498 to follow.

To top things off, we were treated with a sighting of Manatees that came up in front of the boat!  With that, we headed back to the ramp and counted it as another great day to be fishing here at Amelia Island, Florida.