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Hooking Up Anglers Since 2011.
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.
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.
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!
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!
This Fishing Report was submitted on 8/1/2021 4:00:00 PM by Seamus and last updated on 8/2/2021 6:31:26 PM.
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