A Big One That Didn't Get Away

I had met Chandler and Phillip Bailey down at the Sawpit Creek boat ramp early this morning, and under grey skies, we headed north and west with  plans to make our first stop at Spanish Drop and fish jigs and live shrimp with a tide that still had a couple of hours of going out. Both anglers were making excellent casts and even though we had a couple of bites, we had no real takers.

We moved on up to Twin Creeks, fished it a bit, then eased forward to Athens Drop and this paid off with a couple or three of some feisty Redfish catches, then a nice Slot sized Redfish.

The tide was almost at bottom so we ran up to Seymore's Pointe to fish the same dock yesterday where we caught a bunch of Black "puppy" Drum. We worked it pretty good with the jigs and shrimp but had no takers, not a single one! Crazy how that works.  After fishing around the corner (and out of the wind), we made a run.

This time it was down to Broward Island to fish a large marsh run out. The wind and tide was pushing the stern around and that's where Phillip set up. He had only made a cast or two when, BOOM! Big Fish On! I didn't think it was going to be real big(yesterday we caught two "Rats" in the same spot) but when this fish went deep and against the current, ripping drag, we knew it was big!  Phillip kept the pressure on and slowly worked it to the boat and landed a big, oversized 29"+ Redfish, boy what a fish!

Minutes later, he put another Slot fish in the boat. We moved down a bit and picked up two more Reds and a hungry Seatrout. After fishing back at Athens Drop on the incoming tide, to no avail, we headed in and counted it as another great day to be fishing here at Amelia Island, Florida.