I went out with Charles Southall yesterday afternoon to fish for drum. We were mostly looking for black drum so we had a lot of clams. I got what crabs I had in my crab pot and we went fishing. We set up in the buoy 8-10 area. Right off, a cobia ate one of our clam baits. There was a lull after that until right behind the boat, several red drum came up and looked at us. A couple of rods went down and it was pretty much constant until we ran out of crabs. Charles bare-handed a sook floating by, put it on a hook, and caught another drum. There was a wide range in sizes from 41 to 51 inches long. We never did catch a black though Capt. Zach Hoffman had caught some earlier in the day. Every crab we had got eaten. We boated 7 drum, pulled off a number and broke one off when a drag got sticky. We were out of crabs and called it an evening.
It was an action-packed evening trip. Everyone was catching drum like crazy. Ric Burnley was anchored up wind of us. I do not know how many he caught but we could hear is drags screaming. Harry Hindmarsh was out there and ran out of crabs after 19 red drum. They went around and scooped up some more crabs so they could finish with an even 20. At one time, Harry had 6 reds hooked at once. Wes Blow was anchored on the other side of us. I think ended up with something like 14 reds. Both Ric and Wes were fishing solo. Those guys were hopping. Wes was fishing peeler/clam sandwiches. He was low on clam so we took some to him. By the time we got there, he was down to fishing just one rod and that one was hooked up. We waited while he landed that 47-inch fish and then handed him a bag of clams. Capt. Craig Paige was fishing the islands of the CBBT and called us on the radio for a report. He was catching a bunch of big stripers over the tubes and he had just caught a big red drum there also. The bite was on yesterday.
