Black Drum Secrets

[MathGeek]

Black Drum Secrets

Black drum are a popular sport fish in Texas, Florida, and up the Atlantic coast as far as Virginia. They are eschewed among many anglers in Louisiana due to the abundance of redfish and speckled trout, but they are actually the most important commercial fishfish in Louisiana owing to the excellent meat quality and their popularity as imitation crab.

Black drum are a common bycatch when using baits such as shrimp or mullet targeting redfish and specked trout. Experienced anglers know that the smaller black drum (16-27") are just as good to eat as similarly sized redfish, but the "spaghetti worms" (a common parasite) reduces meat yields and turns off many anglers. Just like redfish, as black drum age, their meat changes in consistency, becoming more like chicken in mature fish than the white, flakey fish consistency of younger fish. Well trimmed, this meat makes an excellent substitute for chicken in many dishes. Our family likes drum parmesan, drum kabobs, golden nuggets (drum fried like chicken nuggets), orange drum, sesame drum, sweet and sour drum, and pan seared drum (close to blackened redfish, but with older drum). Just substitute well-trimmed drum for chicken, though the substitutions work better in dishes that have a fruity or tomato component than with gumbo or brown gravy. The secret to success in cooking bigger drum (and redfish) is to think of the task as a variation on chicken dishes rather than as using traditional fish recipes on a different kind of fish.

Big drum can be a lot of fun to catch and provide quite a workout. The best bait to use is crab. A market sized crab cut in half with a 7/0 offset J hook in through the rear leg and out through the bottom is ideal. We leave the top shell on to protect the meat from being eaten too quickly by smaller fish and crabs while soaking on the bottom. Switching to whole crab or crab claws can be useful when smaller fish are quickly picking half crab to pieces. In Louisiana, the best places to fish for mature black drum are on oyster reefs and at passes relatively close to oyster reefs. If a pass is within a few miles of inshore oyster reefs, soaking crab in a "drum hole" at a pass will yield about equal numbers of mature drum and redfish. A drum hole is an underwater depression between 2 and 10 feet deeper than the surrounding bottom. Drum wait at the bottom for currents to deposit crustaceans in the hole which drum quickly snap up. In passes with jetties, there are usually drum holes near the ends of the rock lines to the outside of the protected ship channel. In passes without jetties, a depth finder can be useful locating the holes because tidal and current patterns can result in the deeper spots being harder to find.

Other factors being equal, finding drum in most passes is easier than finding drum on the oyster reefs because what you are targeting on the reefs are locations where there are live oysters, places that have not been harvested in over a year, and moving water. Moving water is the only obvious feature from the surface. It takes experience and thorough background to determine whether the reef has a good quantity of living oysters and hasn't been harvested in a year. For this reason, we recommend focussing on the passes if conditions permit. The passes are also easier to fish being more forgiving of lighter equipment with deeper water and the rock jetties in known location being the most obvious snags and break off points for hooked fish. The bottom of live oyster reefs is covered with sharp shells and barnacles of many kinds and the 30-50 lb power pro that is sufficient in the passes often fails on snags and break-offs bottom fishing the oyster reefs. In the process of setting, soaking, and checking baits and landing fish, the line often needs to turn over a clump of oysters to get free. We've had far fewer break-offs with 80 lb power pro. Lighter line often results in lost terminal tackle and occasional fish. Keeping the rod tip high helps keep fish off the bottom once hooked.

Most anglers do not realize that black drum are a major pest on oyster grounds because they eat so many oysters. In SELA, most holders of private oyster leases hate black drum and would be likely to grant fishing permission to sport anglers who can show a good track record of removing a boat's limit of bull drum and good numbers of slot drum from their leases 20-50 times a year. Becoming skillful at catching black drum may be the best way to gain near-exclusive access to some of Louisiana's best fishing grounds. If you take pictures of a mess of drum and provide the oysterman with regular updates of good drum hauls, I expect you will retain fishing permission as long as that oysterman remains on the lease.

One bait that has proven very promising when crab are unavailable or expensive is crawfish. After watching a fellow on the pier at Grand Isle catch some bull red and drum on crawfish, we've begin to use crawfish as bait when crab are limited and preliminary indications are they work much better when targeting bull drum than shrimp or mullet and last longer than mullet or shrimp.

One last secret for enhancing catch rates in bull drum is a recent result of an experiment we performed testing hooks with a rare earth magnet attached near the eye like a jig head. Our magnetic hooks outfished the lead weight "sham" by almost 4 to 1 in black drum indicating that black drum can both sense magnet fields and are attracted to a baited hook that produces a magnetic field. We used a 1/2" diameter 1/2" long cylindrical magnet from K&J Magnetics. In bulk, these cost around $1 each and also have a hole in the middle so they can also be attached by threading the leader through the magnet (like an egg sinker) before tying on the hook. Magnetic hooks slightly decreased catch rares in bull redfish and showed no effect in gafftop catfish. I also recently won the "other" fish category in a fishing tournament by landing a 30.5 lb black drum on a magnetic hook using crawfish for bait.

"Once you go black, you never throw back."

[calcutta37]

Very nice. Keep catching those big nasty drum.

[Sightwindow]

If I could learn where and how to catch 16-27 in drum consistently, I would be very happy.

[PUREBAY2200]

U can keep catching and keeping them fish.... Thank you for depleting the stock of trophy black drum.

[specknation]

Come ON GEEK Drum. Your credibility is going down the tubes making a essay on drum fishing, next you will have a guide on how to catch HARDHEAD CATFISH just joking. If you would spend this much time an effort on catching speckled trout you would forget about the bottom dwellers.

[PUREBAY2200]

W don't even spend that much time in his search for trout.... And he is a big lake legend......
Mathgeek could catch a new state record trout within a years time if he focused on trout.


But to each their own.

[Top Dawg]

Nice write up. Thanks for the info

[mr crab]

Mg made his intentions very clear. Dude called his shot on winning the trash fish pot. If you put a fun to my head and told me to go out there and I had to catch a 30lb drum, or a 5lb trout, I'd be slangin a skitter. Jussayin. Bustin up on the big nasties ain't my thing, but dude can definitely find em.

[T-TOP]

MG, did you weigh that drum I gave you?


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[Clampy]

Didn't have to look far they had a 40 pounder tailing the rocks at CP during the rain.
Drum Life for Life

[ifsteve]

Great post and nice pic. I actually love to catch blacks on my fly rod especially when I can find them tailing.

[BuckingFastard]

good writeup for sure. thorough as usual.
always a fun fish to catch but i have only eaten it once. i always feel bad for taking big reds or drum, being they are usually older than me. i remember bbqing a huge one and it was pretty good. wasnt in comparison to the flounder aside it though!!

nice pic!

[duckman1911]

Y'all sure had their number MG. Good for you bro .
I like those big nasty bottom dwellers too. Jumping into the trout crowd would be too main stream. Bucking the system and being an outsider is fun. Big, tough fish is what I like. I want to battle a warhorse.

[1fastmerc]

Originally Posted by Top Dawg

Nice write up. Thanks for the info

X2

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["W"]

But I will take your word for it

[Elbert Chamblee]

good info ,,,,like hooking a freight train. Please will somebody go hide the snickers and energy drinks from "W"...

[jkcckc2002]

Nice write up. Thanks for sharing
I have never eaten one. But these days I would rather be catching and eating black drum than working all the time.

[redchaserron]

M.G. that face looks familiar. K.N.?

When I was a kid we ate a lot of black drum, even big ones, and I always enjoyed them. I don't keep them any more, but I do enjoy throwing a fly at them when they are up on the flats. I used to catch a lot of them on the flats around Prien Lk . One summer the flat in the middle of the PPG turnaround was covered with them all summer long, I caught many on fly that year, had them pull the boat around, got rods broken by them and all in all had a good time. This one was from New Years weekend, weighed about 38 pounds, caught on fly in 2 feet of water. He ran a lot faster, farther and stronger than most drum I've caught.

[Clampy]

Now I could get into that.

[Montauk17]

Originally Posted by Clampy

Now I could get into that.

No doubt...now when it comes to keeping and eating big nasty's,not so much.