Jamie Marie - Saltwater Drum Report

[Dtmasportsman]

Late report from Friday, they have been catching black drum in the DE Bay the last couple weeks and myself and some buddies decided to go out after these big bruisers Friday evening.

 

Well it blew its butt off all day Friday and I checked the forecast every 15 minutes to make sure it was still supposed to lay down as predicted in the evening. Well after fighting beach traffic for 2 and a half hours (when drive to ramp usually takes an hour). We finally pulled in to the public ramp at Mispillion inlet and headed out to the Coral Beds off Slaughter Beach. I feel bad for anyone from Jersey as the 20+ mph west winds most likely canceled eveyone's outings.

 

We set up in some slop in 15' of water around 7:00pm. The traffic made us miss the last hour of outgoing I was planning on fishing and we arrived at slack tide. We were bothered with some sharks and a big cow nose ray that fooled us into thinking we had our first drum on. Then when the sun went down, the wind laid down and tide started moving again. We started hearing some drum under the boat and around 8:45 we finally hooked into a drum. I passed the rod off to my buddy JB who had never been drum fishing before. After a nice fight I sunk the gaff into a nice 25-30# drum. Perfect eating size.

 

I rebaited and 5 minutes later I was hooked up again. This time I passed the rod to Walt who also never caught a drum before. You could tell from the begining this was a nice fish. It took Walt around the boat and under the anchor line. Went on some drag screaming runs and after atleast 30 minutes, he finally had a nice 60# fish boat side. We decided to take this fish as well and in the box it went. After that my buddy Tom broke one off. Walt hooked into one but a fray in his braid broke the line way up the line. After getting resituated Walt hooked into another and after a short fight another 30# drum was in the cooler.

 

After that it got slow for an hour. We had another school come through as we could hear them. We had a couple more bites but missed. With it being 11pm we decided to head in and call it a night.

 

It was a great trip and a lot of fun!

[ontherise]

Great report... What do mean when you say you could hear them?

[Dtmasportsman]

You can hear them "drumming" under the boat! It is pretty wild if you've never heard it. 

[Dtmasportsman]

This link has audio of what they sound like, you can hear them when they swim close to the boat. On calm nights you can hear them from hundreds of yards away 

 

http://ocr.org/wp-content/uploads/Black-Drum.swf?width=848&height=434%20rel=

[FleetTracker]

Great report Dave that sounds like a really fun experience. I wish Kings made an audible noise you can hear from the surface - that would really get my adrenaline pumping. Haha

[Dtmasportsman]

Haha it is wild. They only "drum" sometimes, I've caught a bunch when you don't hear them at all, and sometimes everytime you start to hear them its game on. They only hang around this area from the end of April until the middle of June, but its a fun time they pull like freight trains.

[MooseKnuckle VI]

was the meat good or was it all wormy?

[Dtmasportsman]

Hey Moose we found 1 worm in one of the smaller drum. I've never found more than one in any fish and they are easy to cut out. I really like eating black drum. 

 

Here is a link to an article I wrote with my favorite Drum recipe, "Buffalo Drum Fingers" but I guess anything fried and with buffalo sauce can't be bad

 

http://m-asportsman.blogspot.com/2015/05/buffalo-drum-fingers.html