EP 69: Nine Practical Tips For Catching Black Drum

The fastest way to waste a spring black drum trip is to fish them like fluke: drift around, bounce spots, and hope they find you. I’m going the opposite direction and laying out a patient, repeatable approach for black drum fishing that works from a boat, a kayak, or the surf, especially across the Mid-Atlantic from New Jersey and Delaware up through New York and beyond. 

We start with what makes black drum different, from their downward-facing mouth to how they root through sand, mud, shell beds, and clam bottom. That biology explains why “close to the bottom” is not close enough, why circle hooks shine on these slow pick-up bites, and why spring water temperatures and spawning runs push fish into bays, estuaries, and deeper channel edges early before they slide shallower. 

Then I get tactical: blue crab versus clam, keeping scent in the water, anchoring or spot lock instead of drifting, and setting up near structure without parking right on top of it. I also share a simple bait finder rig mindset for weight and line control, plus a boat and kayak anchor-float trick that lets you safely fight big fish off the hook-up spot and return without losing your position. If you’ve ever heard that eerie “drumming” thump at night, you already know why patience can be the best lure. 

If this helps you stick your first drum or your biggest drum, subscribe, share the show with a fishing buddy, and leave a quick review so more anglers can find it. What bait are you most confident in for black drum this spring?

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Transcript

When To Move While Fishing

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing 0:00

I tell people when you're fishing, like for fluke, if you're not catching something within the first couple of minutes, move. Move to another spot. Even if it's only 20 feet to the side, move. That's not the case with these drum fishes. Hello and welcome back to the Fat Dad Fishing Show. I'm your regular host, Rich Natoli, doing another solo show this week. It's been a while since I've been on. It's been a couple of weeks. I've had uh had work interfering with Monday nights, which typically doesn't happen. Monday is actually the least busy day. And it's usually a day where I do a lot of business planning and all that kind of good stuff, a lot of behind the scenes. And uh last couple of Mondays I've been out with clients. So uh looking for the first house. So, you know, gotta go out with the clients, gotta help them try to find the first house of theirs. Um so thanks for sticking with me. We're gonna probably have to do some changes to the way that I do this. I love doing the live stream, even though the vast, vast majority of people that watch the content or listen to the content are not actually here live when I'm doing the show. I like to have it so that people can interact in the chat. But uh as real estate picks up, there may be some times we're gonna have to do a pre-recorded episode and uh and you know just have it play on a Monday night. Uh, I won't necessarily be there. I could be there if I didn't actually have an appointment, but maybe I'd just be in the chat with everybody else while uh I'm talking on the screen. So may have to do some of that. With that said, we are live next week as of right now, and the guest is going to be Captain John Halkias from Jiggin Jerks, uh, the man who puts John Skinner on the fluke. He's gonna be on, so we're gonna talk about some opening spring fluke fishing. Uh as many of you know, that's really that's what I look forward to the most. I I just absolutely love fluke fishing. And uh John's gonna come on. We're gonna talk about that, how to get ready for the season, talk about any recent changes that have come up, and uh yeah, we're gonna hit it hard. I I I'm just really looking forward to being able to get into fluke fishing and hopefully being able to get out on the water. It's been a terrible spring for a lot of people, even though it's been warmer weather, it's that like the days that people can get on the water are just so windy. It's just not working out for a lot of people. But uh hopefully after this little cooling patch that we're heading into right now, we're gonna get some normalcy coming back. As we get into May, it typically calms down a little bit. April is pretty well famous up and down the coast for being the tough month. And part of it is we all want to get on the water, but it sometimes you just can't. So we've got the water temperatures. Hopefully, this little cooling spell coming through isn't gonna do too much to damage the progress in the water temperatures, but hopefully the wind goes away with it and we can get out there on the water. Just way too many people have not been able to get on the water, myself included. Had a couple days where I was ready to go. And no, it's just I just was not willing to put myself into the, you know, in a kayak in the Rariton Bay, you know, with the winds that were kicking up and the water temperatures where they were. Just wasn't wasn't worth it. So I I, like many of you, have been on the sideline. So, hey, let's just talk fishing then. Let's get through another week just talking fishing and getting ready for the first trip on the water. I'm gonna jump in fairly quickly. We're gonna talk about nine tips, a little bit of background on black drum, but nine things that maybe you don't know about catching black drum if you want to get on this this species this spring. It's gonna be a quick episode. Look, it's it's NHL hockey playoffs. I've had a lot of I had several texts today saying, you know, the flyers are on tonight. Yes, I know. I know. I I want to watch them too. So we're gonna go through just nine things. It's not gonna be an hour, but it's going to be information that's going to be helpful to people. So let's hit the sponsors real quick, then we're gonna jump right into the content. Going to start off with Great Bay Outfitters in Tuckerton, New Jersey on Radio Road. Paul is the owner of the shop. He is the guy that you want to see down there. He's had a lot of on-the-water demos going on, comparing one kayak versus another kayak. He's the guy that if you're going to buy a kayak and you want to have it tricked out for you before you get it, his shop is the one that you want. He's not only got the kayak, he's got all the accessories, he's got all the knowledge and know-how on how to properly and safely rig these kayaks so that they're set up for fishing. Paul is a fisherman through and through. He knows what it means to have a fishing ready kayak. He knows where you want the wires, he knows where you want the cables, he knows all of that because he is out on the water. Yes, he has a boat, but he also is on a kayak, probably more. I'm not even going to say probably. He fishes from the kayaks more than he fishes from his boat because that's the way that he prefers to do it. So if you want to get your kayak and get it hooked up by a team of people that are kayak fishermen like you, Great Bay Outfitters is the place to go. They've got the new kayaks, they've got some on consignment. You can try them out on the water, which is always the most important thing to do. So head on down there. Then we have Quad State Tune. Kevin Driscoll is the guy that you want to reach out to if you have a Toyota truck. All makes and models, or not makes all models. He's got the the 4Runner, the Tundra, the Lexus 460, 470. It's the engine tune. So you're going to get improved throttle response, improved torque, improved horsepower, improved shifting when you're on the highway. So it feels like a smoother ride. This is really important if you're towing a boat. If you've got a trailer behind these Toyota trucks, they're amazing trucks, great engines, but you get better performance from these tunes. Kevin's the guy that you want to reach out to. You can reach out to him at 484-633-5975. Tell him where you came from, by the way, from this show. And then for me, real estate. I primarily do residential real estate in southeastern Pennsylvania. We're going to be expanding the Natoli team. And it's not just going to be me into another state. So we're growing. But if you're looking, or if you know somebody that's looking to buy or sell real estate in southeastern Pennsylvania, please send them my way. You've got my number, 267-270-1145. That is how I make my money. That is how I pay the bills. And I'll tell you right now, I'm pretty good at it. And if you want to talk fishing, let's talk fishing and look at houses at the same time. Two of my favorite things to do in the world. Yeah, reach out to me. You can also look up my website. It's just RichardNatoli.com. With that said, let's jump in. We're going to jump into the black drum. And there's a new feature in here. I just want to test this out. Can let me do a poll? We tried this in the past. Let's see if it works. There's the poll on the screen. Who's planning on targeting black drum at least once this spring? And I bring this up because I know a lot of you. I know a lot of fishermen in the mid-Atlantic, and it's not just New Jersey. I know all I know a ton of guys in northern North Carolina, Virginia, a ton in Maryland and New York, New Jersey, even further north. So my question is, are you going to be targeting black drum this spring? It is one of the least targeted fish that are out there. And I I don't know why. I I know a lot of a lot of reasons that people give are not necessarily true. For example, there's a lot of people that say it's a terrible fight. That's not true. A lot of people say they're like big carp. Now that is true in a way, but if you've ever caught carp, they fight like mad. It's it's definitely a fish that if you haven't targeted them, I'm gonna recommend you do it. I I think it's more fun to hook into. Now, the fishing for it is not as much fun with the the way that I like to fish, waiting for the hookup. But once you get that hook up, man, it's a lot of fun. I'm gonna tell you how to get on this fish. So fill out that poll. I want to see if you're gonna be out there, and then we'll talk a little bit maybe later, if we have time, about why you are or are not going to be targeting them. But let me hit a little bit of the biology because the biology is very important. You know, from this channel, I like to talk as much as I can about the research, the science, and the facts behind a species, and it's those things that kind of define how we're going to approach them. So black drum. Black drum, first of all, if you don't know the difference between a juvenile black drum and a sheep's head, you need to look it up. They're they're totally different fish. You fish for them in different ways, but they do have those vertical, the vertical stripes, which are kind of similar, but they totally look different. So please look at the pictures of the two so you can tell the difference between them. But one of the big important things that you need to understand for the biology is with the black drum, it has the downward facing mouth. So it is eating right off the bottom. It's it's stirring up the sand, it's looking in the sand and the mud, which is a key. Those are two of the bottom types that you want to look for them on. The sand and the mud are really important shell beds, anything that they can start stirring up and kind of brushing their head through to stir up the bottom to look for what they're going to eat. They're going to be looking for things like clams and crabs. Those are those are two of the biggest things that they're going to be targeting. So they have that downward-facing mouth. So they don't have to go vertical to eat down at the bottom. They can just kind of skim along the top and swim normally and they can eat. Keep that in mind. That's important when you're going for them because you have to be fishing the bottom. And it's not fish the bottom zone, it's fish the bottom. You have to be on the bottom, you have to be within a couple of inches of it. Otherwise, you're not going to put yourself in the best position. You're going to be outside of the strike zone. What's great is I'm seeing right now that 75% of the people viewing are looking are looking to target the black drum. So hopefully this helps. Hopefully, this does help for some of you if you haven't done it before. And let me hide that pole so it's not sitting up there the whole time. All right. So, knowing that, the second thing to know is at this time of the year in the mid-Atlantic, this is the time of year where the black drum are moving into the bays and the estuaries to spawn. So it's breeding season. They're moving into these shallower waters, but at the early part of the spring, especially the more northern areas that you go, they're going to be in a little bit in the deeper channels. As the water warms up, they're going to start going shallower and shallower. So at this point, if you're all the way up in New York or even north of New York, and yes, you can catch black drum all the way up to Maine, you can actually catch them all the way up into Canada. You're going to be, you know, it it depends on where you are as to the exact timing, but they are moving into these bays and estuaries for spawning. So you're going to be looking at this point the further north in the deeper channels, something in the 15 to 30 foot range. And then as you go south, you can start looking a little bit shallower depending on water temperatures. Their optimum range, their peak range of activity is going to be in a water temperature between 55 degrees and 70 degrees, but they will still be active up to about 75 degrees. And then it gets a little bit uncomfortable for them. That's where you see them start looking for the deeper waters again. And they're going to start looking for a little bit more, a little bit more protection. It gets a little uncomfortable for them. So they're not going to want to hang out in the hotter water. So we're well within that range right now, pretty much all the way up and down the coast. You can catch them literally up the entire east coast of the United States. So this is the time to go out and start targeting them. I have seen a lot of great pictures of some really solid fish being caught on the beaches, in the inlets, and back in the bays. So let's talk about that. All right. The first thing is that I'm going to say if you want to get on them, you are becoming a bait fisherman. You don't have to, but your best result is going to be fishing baits. So what I recommend is using circle hooks for drum. And the reason that I recommend this is because of the way that they pick up the bait and the way that they bite. They're not swimming through bait fish and attacking and then running off. What they're doing is they're going along the bottom, they're stirring it up, they're finding the food, they're getting it into their mouth, and they're holding it in their mouth and then swallowing it. So it really lends itself to the circle hook in that regard. You're not going to get that big runoff. You're not going to get that big strike. It's often a pickup, and then you start feeling some weight starting to be applied to the rod. So the way that you typically would set the hook, whether it's a regular hook or if it's a circle hook, is you wait for it to get tight and then you set it. Circle hook, you don't even have to. Just let the weight go, reel it, and then it'll come tight, and then you have them hooked up. But but it's important to remember you're going to want to use bait. They're going to be on the bottom looking for crabs, first of all, and then clams, oysters, those types of things. So let's go into tip number one. Tip number one is yes, it is bait, but to go a little bit further, this is something that a lot of people won't say, especially the more, the more you go north. And I'm not going to talk about any regulations or anything. I'll just tell you you look at your regulations in your area, you decide if anything I say is legal or not. I'm going to tell you right now, the number one bait, without question, to me, it's not clam. And that's what everyone's going to tell you. That's what every bait shop's going to tell you. It's actually blue crab. So if you can get blue crab and you're allowed to use blue crab, and again, I'm not going to talk about regulations. There are certain areas where you can't. You want to use, you want to use blue crab whenever possible. That is going to be the number one bait that they're going to take. I have fished blue crab side by side with clam. They both work, but blue crab is clearly, has clearly been the winner over the 30 plus years that I fished for black drum. I've caught quite a quite a few of them. And whenever I can, I'm fishing with the blue crab. Now, you don't have to use the whole one. Typically, you have to have the bigger ones. So cut it in half and rip off the top of that shell. Remove the top shell. You don't have to have it on there. And I do use circle hooks, and I will I will basically thread it through like you would for a to. I'll put it through a leg and then I'll just have it wrap around and then over the top and just kind of have it lay there. They pick it up and they take the whole thing in, and then you just reel it tight and you're set. If you can't get blue crab or there's or the regulations don't allow you to, or you just can't get any of the proper size. That's typically where the regulations come in. Use the clam. Use clam. Try to use fresh clam. Frozen clam can be a problem. If you're using frozen clam and it's not in the best of shape, it'll still work. Not as well as the really fresh stuff. But at that point, then you can start thinking about using things like the bait bags that they use for the blood worms for making the blood balls. You can start using some of the, it's not dental floss, but it looks like dental floss, the elastic that you can wrap around it to hold it on the hook. But you definitely want it to be something that's going to hold on the hook because when they suck that in, it can pull it right off the hook and just leave the hook behind. So make sure you're doing that and make sure it's on the bottom. Now, the big thing is when you're fishing for them and you're in a boat, stop drifting. Stick it on spot lock or better yet, drop the anchor. You need to be in one spot for it. And you can chump for them. You can use clam, you can use crab, you can use shutter oil, all that to get into the water to get some scent going. But you want to be in one spot. As they're feeding, they're not free ranging all around. They're going in a pattern. They're they're covering ground. So it's think about it as kind of like a search. They're very methodically going through an area looking for their food, and they're not just skipping around looking all over the place. So if you're drifting, you could just be drifting away from them and they'll never catch up to you because they're not hightailing it anywhere. They're just kind of moving through an area and feeding. So bring an anchor, use the anchor, use a spot lock if you don't want to use an anchor, but use something you definitely don't want to be drifting. And part of that means you don't want to be using weights that are going to move on the bottom. You have to have enough weight to keep that bait right down near the bottom. All right. And I'll go into the the way that I rig it up in a minute. Now it's good enough for me to say anchor, right? Okay, easy to say. The next question is where are you going to anchor? This is still part of tip number two. You're going to want to set up near structure, but not really, not on top of structure. So for example, and this is the further north you get, it seems to be the less people want to fish in this spot. Bridges, all right. Bridges are great, but you don't want to be along the bridge. So if you're fishing it like a sheep's head or a tog where you're going right down the column, you're that's not the best place to be. They're going to be off to the side of it. They're going to be on the channel edges. If there's an oyster bed, they're probably not sitting up in the oyster bed, but they're around the edges of it. So start looking for areas like that. Stay next to the structure. You don't necessarily have to be on top of the structure. On a bridge, I would not be really up close and tight to it. I would look for the current brakes behind the bridge and stay off of it a bit. They're not going to be feeding on the pilings like a sheep's head. And that's one of the big differences between the two. And again, part of it is the mouth placement. Where's the mouth on the sheep's head versus where the mouth is on the black drum? One's in the front and one's on the bottom. There's no way that a black drum is going to be feeding up a piling, eating muscles, you know, two feet from the top. They're going to be on the bottom and most likely off of the structure a little bit. So that's where you want to be looking. And keep in mind the currents and the way the currents go because the scent is what's going to usually bring them right to your bait. There could be a lot of bait on the bottom, but it's the scent. That's why I said if you're going to use a crab, cut it in half and pull the top off. It gets the scent out there. If you're going to use a clam, put it down there, make sure it stays on there and stays in one spot because that's what's going to draw them in. So think about how that current is moving over structure behind it and how it's going to draw it in. Don't just drop it in the middle of nowhere where there's no funneling of currents, no funneling of the scent in the water. Look for a spot that's going to funnel it next to an eddy. If you're fishing near bridges, look for the eddies and fish near there because you can see where the currents are going to bring the scent, and that's going to bring it up towards you. All right. Next one. Fish the right depth zone again. Early season. Early season, they're going to be in the deeper channels. Like right now in New Jersey, for example, they're starting to move up because we've had we have really warm water compared to other years. I don't know, again, I don't know how long it's going to last, but fish the deeper channel. So look anywhere from 15 down to about 30 feet. You will catch them down there and be ready for the larger fish at this time of the year. Again, they're coming into spawn. As the temperatures start to rise, so as you get through, you know, in the southern, more southern areas in Virginia and North Carolina, you're probably already up in the five to 15 foot range. They're all the way up now into the bays and the estuaries. So you're going to want to move shallower in that case, you know, as shallow as about five feet. You typically don't go any less than that. I mean, you can catch them in the flats that are two feet, but that's not where I would be looking for them. I wouldn't be anchoring in a flat that's three feet deep. I'd be looking for somewhere that's between five and 15 feet in the southern areas. Right now, I'd be looking in around the 15 to 30 range, anywhere from New Jersey north. Maryland, you're kind of in the middle right there. So you may have to do a little experimenting for your area to see where they're holding right now. But fish the right depth. And again, I'm going to say it again, fish the bottom. Fish it right on the bottom. One thing that people do tend to get wrong is they tend to look for still water. It's not, it's it, they're like other fish, right? You need the moving water, you need the current. So look for the currents and fish the currents. Now, don't look for the strongest currents because again, they're like other fish. They don't want to be fighting a ton of current in order to get their meal, but they need the current to start pushing the meal into a predictable area. Even things like clams and crabs, they kind of get funneled into certain areas by the currents. So make sure you understand the way the currents are moving, the structure that's around it, and adjust your approach so that you're hitting those areas. All right. It's very important. The less current there is, the slower the fishing is going to be. Also, the less the scent from your baits are going to be able to help you to draw those fish into you. Next one, number five, make sure you I mentioned this before, but make sure that the weight that you're using is heavy enough to hold in one spot. Now, with that said, the way that I fish them is I use a bait finder rig. So I put the weight on there and I have just enough to hold the bait, the size bait that I'm going to have down there. So if you have a half of a blue claw, for example, that's a lot of drag on there. So a stronger current is going to lift it. So you have to go with a stronger weight. But I counteract that by having it on one of those slip sinkers so that the line can be fed in and out and the weight can still stay on the bottom. The key to that is drawing. Drop it down to the bottom and only let a little bit of line out behind it. What you don't want is 10 feet of line between your bait and the sinker, because then you have 10 feet of swing in that current. And that's a lot for these fish. Bring you want it just a few inches off the back of it. If it's moving a few inches left and right as the current's going over it, that's fine. But keep it close. That also helps you so when they pick it up, you can let them move with it before they can feel the weight. You can just keep letting out the line, let out the line. You're sure there's a fish on it now. Now you can start tightening it, start letting the circle hook do its job. And then you can just lock it down and crank it until you have it locked in and you have it hooked in the in the corner of the mouth. So yeah, so make sure you're using that weight. And you don't want a ton of it. You drop a four-ounce, they're gonna feel it. I don't think it makes that big of a difference. We're talking sometimes 100-pound fish in this case, but you know, the average fish that you're gonna get is going to be probably at this time of the year. Let's use Delaware as an example. I would say that you're probably going to be average talking about 25 to 30 pound fish, with a trophy being something 75, 80 pounds plus, you know, up to about 110, 115. So these are bigger fish, they can handle those bigger weights, but the tastier fish are the smaller ones. So you definitely don't want to be, you know, using weight that's too much, and it's going to give them an indication that there's something wrong when they pick up that bait. All right. Next tip, number six, let them eat. I mentioned this already. This is where most people miss these fish. And I'm I'm the type of fisherman where I have to remind myself this. I am a swing and swing hard type of guy, right? You'd think I'm in a championship bass tournament for every little fish that I that I hook or try to hook. I'm like set in the hook, trying to cross their eyes. You don't need to do that. You need to let them eat. So you need to let them pick it up. They're gonna give that slow pull as they start moving away from you. There's gonna be like this steady, consistent weight on the rod. Let them start taking it and then slowly tighten down on it. And then once it's locked in, if you want to do, I do this too, even with a circle hook. I'll do some some pumps on the rod to set it just to make sure it's in there to get it through bone if I have to get it through bone. But you you gotta you gotta be really patient with them. You have to let them pick it up. You have to be sure that it's actually a fish that's on it. And sometimes they'll just pick it up and drop it and pick it up and drop it. So you want to wait for them to pick it up and start leaving with it. That's again where these bait binders really help. They really help you to hook them and they really help you to pick them up. All right, next one. Number seven, bigger baits do equal bigger fish in this case. Yes, elephants eat peanuts, but trophy drum, they're typically going to be looking for the bigger baits, and they're gonna move in and they're gonna take the bigger baits from the smaller fish that are around. So if you're out there truly looking for the trophies, you know, 70, 80 plus pound fish, which again, and some people are amazed that you can get them this size. You can get them in in that range all over the place. You don't have to go to the Delaware Bay, you don't have to go to these bigger areas of water, you can catch them next to bridges in inlets, you can catch them in shallow bays in the backwaters, all the way up and down the coast, all the way down through Florida, up to Maine, into Canada. And they're gonna be trophies at this time of the year. It's the time to go after them. So if you're gonna go after them and you want the bigger ones, use the bigger baits, use the bigger hooks. Think of the circle hooks. If you're gonna use circle hooks that you would use for striped bass, those are going to be the size. So if you're if if you have hooks right now for striped bass that you want to use, maybe I don't know what size you want to use, but the larger hooks, like tens, twelves, whatever, those are the ones that you want to use. And they're gonna they're gonna hold up fine for a drum fish. They do have a big fight, they do have a lot of weight to them, but if you're gonna be able to land a 50-inch striped bass with something, you're going to be able to land a hundred-pound drum fish at the same with the same with the same exact gear. If you if you want to look for the smaller, tastier fish, then definitely size down. Again, you can still catch the larger ones, but you can pick up the smaller fish easier with the smaller baits. So look at quartering a crab in that case, or using small clams, small bits of clam. But sometimes there's nothing you can do. If the giants are moving through, that's what you're gonna end up getting. So make sure you have the right gear and make sure that you're ready for them. You're not gonna have in these fights the really strong, fast runs. You they're just not gonna do it. It's not gonna be like a redfish taking off in two feet of water and just, you know, that the high-pitched squeal on your reel. It's not gonna do that. But what it is gonna be is a very strong, steady run. That's it's it's just gonna start going and it's just gonna be weight and it's just gonna be power, and it's just gonna power away from you. It is a great fight. When you get it up and it sees the boat, you'll get a run. And it'll probably do that two or three times. The bigger, the more times they'll do it. But usually maybe by the fourth one, you're kind of done. They're gonna come up, you're gonna be able to net them. Yeah, so but again, bigger, the bigger baits are definitely gonna be the bigger fish. They do swim together. The small fish are going to be with the big fish. So if you want to weed through it, go with the larger baits. All right, next one, point number eight, fish near but not in the heavy structure. So I mentioned this, stay just off of the structure. Don't go right up on the bridges, go off to the side of the bridges. If you're fishing a bridge in between the pilings, where the boats go is where you want to be. You want to be off of those. They're not going to sit in there, they're not going to sit behind the for the current breaks. They're going to be actively feeding in the middle. If you've ever watched the videos, and look, you're you're watching this on YouTube. You probably watch fishing videos on YouTube. Watch the guys down at the Chesapeake Bay Bridge when they're catching the black drum, really at this time of year. Quite often they are in the middle of the spans on those bridges. They're not up tight on them, and they're catching these monsters down there. Actually, I tend to think we get bigger ones a little bit further north. But yeah, you don't, you're not going to be right up against the structure. And one of the things that I do recommend is very similar to Sheep's Head, if you're going to fish close to a bridge near those pilings, when you hook them, let the let the anchor go, drift off of it, and then start drifting away and let that kind of pull the fish away from the pilings. And once it's away, they're typically going to go down current away from you. They're they're very they're very predictable in that sense. They're you're not going to get a ton of upcurrent fights where you're where you're now going up current because that's the way they're going. They're they're going to take the easy way, they're going to go, they're going to go with the current away from you. So keep that in mind where you're setting up so that you have a really easy place to go. Now, a little bonus thing for this, because I know there's a lot of kayak fishermen, you need to set up your anchor correctly in advance. All right. I recommend boats do this too. Your anchor when you're drum fishing is only until you hook that fish. Do not fight that fish while on anchor unless you have to. There's there's no reason to. So, what you should be doing, what I always recommend, have a float for your anchor line. On a boat, you get those big red or orange floats, and you just run the anchor line through there, and then you run it in into a cleat. And then once you hook up and you're you're solidly hooked into that fish, release it from the cleat. It's it's tied off on that float and just let the float go. Do the same thing in a kayak. A two-liter bottle for soda works really well. Just loop it around there. Most people use power cord for their kayak lines for their anchors, wrap it around the neck of the bottle. Make sure you have the top on it so it stays floating. And just as soon as you hook up, release it, and then just let it go in the water and let it float. It does two things. It saves your spot so you know exactly where you were. So all of the chumming or anything that you did before is still working. As soon as you catch that fish and you release it or you save it, whatever you're gonna do, you can motor right back to the same spot, tie it right back off on the cleat, and you are immediately back fishing. But the other thing that it does is it keeps the strain off of that fish and off of that equipment and it doesn't blow out the spot where you have one drum fish going through all these other drums that are trying to feed. It doesn't rile them up. It allows you to kind of get away from them. I always recommend you do this. If if you're not doing it, you're really, I, in my opinion, you're hurting yourself. It's kind of like striped bass sometimes when they're not in a frenzy. If you catch a striped bass quite often, think about nighttime actually. If you catch, if you have a small school of striped bass and you catch one, typically it shuts down the bite for about 15 or 20 minutes. I have seen that happen with black drum as well. So save yourself that. Just release the anchor, let it float, get your fish in, taken care of, whether you're keeping it or letting it go, get your pictures, get it back in the water, turn around, head back up, tie off, and you're immediately ready to go. That is a bonus tip. It's something I highly, highly recommend. And you're not going to lose your anchor that way as long as you have the float tied on properly. And for the most part, the other fishermen are doing the same thing. So they will respect that spot and they won't go in and try to take it from you when you come off that anchor. Now, there are times where people will you handle that the way that you want to handle that. But for the most part, fishermen will acknowledge that, yep, that's your spot, your anchor's still there, and you get it back when you're done. Next one, and this is the most important one. This is the last one. This is a soak it, you know, talk about the 24-hour soak, man. This is this is where you got to put the time in in the spots, right? So in a lot of in a lot of cases, I tell people when you're fishing, like for fluke, if you're not catching something within the first couple of minutes, move, move to another spot, even if it's only 20 feet to the side, move. That's not the case with these drum fish. I would give it a minimum of a half an hour in a spot. If you think you have a spot where they're going to be, a minimum of a half an hour is what I'm going to say. Maybe 45 minutes is probably the max. So go to that 15-minute window and then make your decision whether or not you're going to stay or you're going to move. But this is definitely a soaking the bait game. It absolutely is. So, with that being said, that doesn't mean throw out one bait and let it sit for 35 minutes and then move. What it means is keep a fresh bait in the water in the same spot for 30 to 45 minutes before you consider moving. So if you're using a crab, you're going to have to replace that crab way before your half an hour, probably 10 to 15 minutes in, you're going to want a fresh one because all that scent's going to get washed out. Remember, taking the tops off. If you're using clam, it's the same thing. It's just all that water flow over it is going to get rid of that scent and it's going to become less and less effective over time. So make sure you're replacing that bait in the same spot for 30 to 45 minutes. At that point, then you can make the decision whether or not you want to move. But the the last thing is if you start hearing the drums, just stay where you are. And people, I don't a lot of people haven't heard it before. It literally sounds like a bass drum. So when they're when they're drumming, you can hear them and you can feel them. It's actually a pretty eerie sound when you're night fishing, and all of a sudden you just kind of feel it on the hull of the boat. You just feel like a thumb, thum, thum. That's that's them. And once you hear that, whether you're getting bites or not, you could be sitting there for an hour. If you're hearing that, don't move. Don't move. Get more scent in the water if you're not getting bites. Change it up to a different bait, switch from that crab over to clam, or vice versa. But you're in the right spot. They're close at that point, and you're going, you're gonna want to get a little bit more patient at that point. There is a comment in there black drum in the surf. This is a great time of year for surf fishing for the black drum. And all of this remains the same. And the big thing, again, for that is try to use a weight that's going to keep you in a confined area, right? You don't want to toss it out and just have it drift the entire beach to your left on the incoming or to your right on the outgoing. You want to have it stay in generally the same area. What you're looking for on the beaches are the cuts. It's like any other fish, any other time of year when you're fishing the surf, it's it's the structure. So they're not going to just be sitting there. They're going to be, you know, out in the middle of a some desert land in the flats. That's not where they are. They're going to be coming up the channels through the rips, off to the side of the rips, behind the sandbars, in any little pockets, any little holes. That's where you're going to want to look. So yeah, this is the time to catch them. I've seen some really, really nice fish pulled out in New Jersey and in Delaware over the past three days. So yeah, Saturday. Yeah, Saturday is when I saw the first ones going up that I'm that I'm thinking of right now. They were anywhere between 15 and I think the biggest one was about 45 pounds. So some really nice size fish that that were all from the surf. So they, and as a matter of fact, it was by catch because these guys were fishing for striped bass in a very similar spot, and they ended up getting the black drum, and not one of them complained because nice fight, delicious dinner, and yeah, and that's that's it, man. That that's how to do it. I I don't understand why people don't want to catch them. People like to say, you know, they don't fight, they do a fish that big. I'll tell you a story. My brother can vouch for this, and I wish I had it with me, a custom rod that my grandfather caught. I think it was a 76-pound black drum on, obviously years ago. And it was a weak fish rod, so it was he was definitely under-geared. Took him two and a half hours to get it in. And I think it was in about 20 feet of water. He ended up keeping it. It was just about four ounces shy of the world record for the line class at the time. I think it was 10-pound test. So talk about a fight, talk about the dinners, and man, the scales, they were like, I mean, they were huge. They were they were huge scales on that thing. I'll I'll I'm I'm gonna find a picture of that and share it on the page sometime. That's that was one of the coolest catches I've ever seen. I wasn't there when it was caught, unfortunately, but I do have the rod that he used. It was amazing to me that it that he caught it, and it kind of kind of got him hooked, I think, a little bit on the black drum. He was he was fishing for weak fish at the time, so it was unexpected. But yeah, he dropped to the bottom. He let the bait sit for a moment, not trying to do anything. I don't, I he wasn't trying to catch a fish at the time. The bait was just sitting there. I think he was doing something else, and then something picked it up, he set the hook and he caught it. But um, that's part of the reason that I'm just totally infatuated with this fish, is that uh my grandfather did a pretty good job and I was kind of introduced to them from him. That was in the Delaware Bay, by the way. Um right off the, I think it was right to the north side of the the ferry. So right up in those flats up in there. There's so there's a lot of clam beds up there. It was up in those clam beds where they caught them, where he caught that fish. So yeah, I don't want to ramble on too long. Wanted to give you these nine tips for catching black drum. Please, if you get out there and you get on these fish, send me some pictures. I'd love to share them. I don't think I'm going to be able to hit the water until the opening of fluke, and that's still up in the air for me. But that's when I'm uh I'm 90% sure I'm actually going to get on the water. I'm probably going to go just for fluke that day. But these drums are going to be there in the New Jersey, Delaware, New York, uh, for quite a while. We we have weeks and weeks left for them before they move into other areas. Up north, you have plenty of more time. And uh down south, you're right in the middle of it right now. So yeah, so thank you everybody for tuning in. I'll let you get to your your playoff hockey tonight and maybe the Phillies if you're just a glutton for punishment and you want to watch something terrible. Uh, but yeah, thanks for tuning in next week. Oh, wait. Oh, okay. Joe is asking real quick, have I updated my kayak yet? No, I'm actually just holding on to my kayak, the same one. I have not updated, upgraded, or done anything with the kayak at this point. I the plan is to upgrade to a powered version. I'd like the epdL uh or an autopilot. Prefer the epdL though. But uh as of right now, I'm still in the the big water PDL. So I'm gonna be on that. So uh yeah. So hey guys, send the pictures, let me see them next week. Halkeist will be on. We're gonna talk fluke. Hopefully, you guys can get through this colder weather and somebody can get on the water because I have to live vicariously through all of you. And until next week, until next episode, everyone, get out there, get on the water, get some tight lines.