A Day In The Life of A Fishing Tournament

You may have noticed I haven't been fishing weekends this summer - it's a way for me to cut back, not have to deal with the boat ramp crowds, and keep me enjoying my job! But yesterday was an exception - John Raker wanted to fish the Fernandina Kingfish and Rodeo Tournament with his mother Betty and his sister's boyfriend Kenny so we planned to fish it, and fish it we did!  I met John and his "team" out at Goffinsville Park early - 6:15am and with a Tournament start time at 6:30am, we motored down to the mouth of the Nassau River to fish the last three hours of an outgoing tide.

The day before I had checked with Amelia Island Bait and Tackle and Leaders and Sinkers for mud minnows. I knew it was going to be a long day and with the hot river water, keeping dozens and dozens of shrimp alive would be really tough. And to top that off, the "baitstealers" have been really prevalent and we'd blow thru all our bait. But the bait shops indicated that their bait supplier was having difficult getting minnows and they were both out. OUCH. So much for a plan!  But I had a couple of hours of time between washing my boat and the Friday Tournament Captain's meeting so I ran down to Sawpit Creek with a couple of dead mullet, baited a minnow trap, tossed it out, and waited in my truck with the AC blowing wide open. When I walked up to the trap I could see minnows in it so I was thinking, "well, we'll have a few". But there were about 2-3 dozen minnows in the trap!  So I kept dropping it back in, sitting in my truck, checking it, emptying it, and when I left I had about 80 minnows for the next day Tournament. I took them home, put an aerator on them, and dropped a frozen water bottle in to keep them cool. 

Carol and I met John up at the Tournament meeting and we sat in to listen to a review of the rules. We had wanted clarification on how many fish we could bring in and sure enough, we found at that we could "enter" a Redfish, a Trout, a Flounder, a Sheepshead, and multi-spot Redfish in the Rodeo category of the Tournament.  I had the boat and truck gassed, had emptied out my dry box for extra cooler space, frozen some water bottles, stocked drinking water, and gave the boat some extra cleaning time.

Saturday morning I was up early, 4:45am and made me large cup of coffee and had my "Overnight Oats"concoction that Carol has been making. She's been putting 1/3 cup of  Oatmeal in a Tupperware, covering that with 1/3 cup of  Almond milk, adding a dab of honey, a sprinkle of cinnamon, then chopping up pecans and fruit (that morning it was peaches). When I get up in the morning I stir it all up and eat it while driving to the bait shop. Carol had also made a couple of  Turkey sandwiches and made up a couple of Tupperware's full of fruit, raw vegis and a big one of fresh cut pineapple. I had a customer once who had some fresh cut pineapple on the boat and it is really good on a hot day. 

After loading the minnows and a couple of big frozen bottles of water for the food cooler,  I picked up a bag of ice at the Jiffy store, then eased around to the Amelia Island Bait and Tackle shop and was first in line when they opened early at 5:30am(thank you!). I ordered 5 dozen live shrimp, a pint of fiddler crabs and shoveled out a big bucket of ice for the drink cooler, then was heading out to Goffinsville Park to meet John and his crew. I had just launched when they pulled up and after getting them settled, we pulled away from the dock just as the sun was coming up. 

Fishing south of Spanish Drop, but heading back into the outgoing current, the three anglers began pitching jigs and minnows - they were fresh and lively (the minnows, not the anglers, they were still sleepy eyed). We picked up a couple of feisty Redfish, a couple of Trout, and a couple of Jack Crevalle. We did have one or two keeper sized Seatrout that when in the live well.  We worked a good number of marsh runouts and shell beds along that whole stretch, more than I normally do, but we had a long day ahead of us and I wanted to fish it thoroughly. All three anglers we making excellent casts and it paid off with fish catching. Betty held her own with the younger anglers - she put some Redfish in the boat and battled a hard fighting Jack to the net. I could tell Kenny was an accomplished angler -he was making pinpoint casts and hooking up at a steady rate.  I think the high point of the trip was seeing a family of Salt Marsh minks - at least 4 of them- scampering along the shell bank. What a treat!

When the tide changed we moved up to the Nassauville area. A dock I was wanting to fish was occupied by a boat (that weekend fishing issue) but I hadn't fished Bubblegum Reef in  quite a while, and being in a Tournament, I thought, "what the heck". I eased over to it, motoring idle speed and "Bump" we found it! After backing off we dropped lines and began to try and fish it - we couldn't see it, but  we found it on occasion with a hung jig.  But Betty was drifting a float up along the shell bed and picked up the first Flounder of the day. It wasn't big enough to keep but it gave us an Amelia Island Back Country Slam. Then Kenny had a "tap", set the hook, and Fish On! He played it patiently to the boat and landed a keeper sized Sheepshead. John and I had noticed that the 2019 Tournament results were still up on the board at the Captain's meeting and that year no one had checked in a Sheepshead, so we agreed that we might as well take this one in at check in. 

The tide had been coming in for a while at Nassauville so we ran down to Broward Island and fished the south end. We worked it pretty good but had no takers. We then moved back to the north end and got some good action on Jigs and minnows and Shrimp.. Kenny was catching small Redfish, the trio picked up a few Croakers, then we landed a Sheepshead or two using the fiddler crabs. But we didn't get that big Redfish I was hoping for.  We then moved up to the mouth of Pumpkin Hill and switched to Float rigs. Kenny caught a keeper sized Seatrout as we worked along the bank, then John hooked up with a fish that was pulling drag. I thought it would be a slot Redfish but no, it turned out to be a big 20.5" Seatrout. That's a fish we can take to the weigh in!

We worked down the bank as it approached 2pm and boy was it getting hot. We had a nice breeze blowing all day but with the sun up, even the breeze wasn't cooling us off. But we soldiered on! As we approached a grassy island both Kenny and John had some bites, but no takers.  The area was looking right so we decided to troll back against the current and fish out of there. John had made an excellent cast and as his float disappeared he slowly lifted his rog and let the circle hook set and, he had a hookup. He said later he didn't think it was very big but then it dug deep and started ripping drag and BIG FISH ON!  It wasn't running like a Shark but I was a bit worried that it was big Jack Crevalle but when I saw it boil I knew it was a big Redfish. I think all of us got a little nervous knowing that we may have a Tournament sized fish on the line. But John played it like a pro, was very patient, and let it run when it wanted to but worked it slowly in. I think we counted 5 runs before he came to the surface and then we were already speculating, "Too Big?".  John brought it to the net and we hauled in a huge bull of a Redfish. A quick measure and sure enough, it was too big, measuring right at 28"!  Oh man, balancing the joy of catching such a big fish on light tackle against the disappointment of knowing it was too big to take to Weigh In was a tough pill to swallow!

The day was getting long but we still had a couple of hours of fishing before we had to make the run to Weigh In. We fished the rocks at Nassauville hoping for a wayward Redfish, then ran thru Horsehead and over to the mouth of Jackstaff and fished a good stretch of marsh grass with the now flooding tide, to no avail. After fishing another marsh line around on the intercoastal side,  it was 4pm so we pulled up the trolling motor, battened down everything, then made the 20 minute run up the intercoastal to the Check In boat. John showed them our boat number (383) and we then eased up to the outer dock at the marina. John and Kenny walked the fish up to get them checked in and weighed.  When I picked them up back at the dock they reported that there was already a Seatrout on the board bigger than ours, and also a Sheepshead on the Board bigger than ours. But, we had brought fish in and we knew that we had a big Red photographed for some good memories!

The ride back to Goffinsville was a nice one. I took the shortcut thru Alligator Creek and we were back to Goffinsville in no time and as we eased up to the dock I think all of us were feeling the long day of heat wearing on us but it was a good "hard fought" day of fishing so I counted it as a great one to be out on the water fishing here at Amelia Island!