It was getting tough to see, and it seemed that black drum now had the run of the place. We tiptoed within casting range of a pod of several drum. The dad cast and his fly landed in their midst. After a quick strip, the water humped up behind the fly and the line came tight. After a spirited, splashy fight, a 4-pound black drum came to hand. They were excited, and I was excited, but none of us had a clue as to what was in store. It would’ve been nearly pitch black out if not for the rising moon. The eerie light illuminated the flat and I was thinking about getting back to the dock, but then we caught another drum and then another and the moonlight kept getting brighter and brighter. The father voiced his concern about getting out of the backcountry at night and I assured him it would be no problem, thanks to the moon.
As it turned out, our 3-hour tour turned into a surreal 8-hour day on the water. I was amazed that so many 2- to 5-pound black drum would act like reds, scarfing our flies with abandon. I recall that we headed home just before midnight, caught precious few winks and fished the following day. You would have thought that after that marathon I’d collapse that evening and sleep for 12 hours, but I just tossed and turned. The rising moonlight streamed through my bedroom window, and an hour later, there I was, motoring back to that flat in hopes that the black drum bite wasn’t a fluke. Happily, it wasn’t, and since that August night, I can’t count how many evenings that I have spent catching drum on fly and light tackle and learning something new every time out.
Techniques and Distribution
As a kid I caught black drum by soaking dead shrimp under a cork along the banks of the Texas ICW (Intracoastal Waterway) and along the surfside jetties. Nowadays I take them by blind casting with spoons and jigs in the marsh guts. I even caught one while throwing a plug for redfish in the fall. On rare occasions, they smack topwater plugs.
But my favorite method, by far, is to sight cast to them with fly or light tackle in backcountry shallows. Finding drum, especially in the summer, is a pretty simple thing, at least in the coastal bend of Texas. All an angler has to do is quit assuming that every tail they cast to is a redfish that just refused to eat.
Most grassy bay shorelines and many of the larger backcountry lakes in Texas have several large schools of juvenile black drum that break up into smaller groups, or feed alone early in the morning and late in the evenings. They usually root with abandon when targeting small crabs, shrimp and sand eels. They leave what my good friend and legendary Texas guide Chuck Scates calls “drum doodles”—divots in the hard sand bottom.
It takes a delicate, precise cast to catch scent-oriented fish this shallow.
When the fish are schooled in bright daylight, they can be spooky. However, in low light I have often walked to within a rod’s length of them.
Anglers often relate stories about casting to hundreds of tailing redfish that don’t eat or spook in the normal fashion. I suspect that they have not seen enough drum to distinguish between the two. A black drum’s tail lacks the bronze color, as well as the spot (which seldom shows above water anyway). Also, a black drum’s tail is more translucent than that of a redfish. Like reds, black drum tail together in pods, but redfish depend more on their sight than do black drum. The drum relies heavily on smell and feel. For this reason, you need to present a fly or lure close to the drum’s mouth. If the bait passes close enough for the drum to feel its vibration, chances are the fish will see it. That’s why I fish flies with rattles for drum. If you don’t fly-fish, small plastic jigs and bucktails that incorporate small worm rattles work best.
For those lacking sight-casting skills, flats drum are still fair game. When I have kids aboard and the drum are tailing, I put a piece of cut crab on a circle hook, make the cast a few feet out in front of the fish, and hand them the rod. The circle hook ensures a hookset.
