March 15, 2008

Ed and Allan made a quick one day trip to Galveston with me on Saturday to catch their first big, ugly Black Drum. My family had planned to make the trip, but decided to skip this time partly because of rough water and recovering from spring break.

We were greeted with clear skies when we got on the water around 10:30 AM. The ride to the North Jetty was actually not bad considering the winds were already around 15 mph. It was about 70 degrees and the wind died down after a few hours. It was a great day to be on the water.

I navigated to one of my favorite spots just east of the boat cut near two wrecks marked on my GPS in about 35 feet of water with a surface temp of 65 degrees. We dropped the crabs in the incoming tide and it was "game on" within about 10 minutes. Ed and Allan started us off with their first drum coming in at 40 and 36 pounds. Our tally for the day was 8 Black Drum ranging from 18 to a monster 54 pound drum that took Allan about 30 minutes to land. It's a good thing Allan loads about 500 yards of braided line on his reel because the 54 pounder pulled a considerable amount of line off the reel for about 10-15 minutes. For a few minutes, we thought Allan may have snagged one of the huge ships passing through the ship channel the way the line was peeling off the reel.

It was Reel Fun fishing on Saturday.

Ed Fighting His First Drum

Allan's 54# Big Ugly

March 1-2, 2008

Randy made the trip to Galveston with me this weekend for some action on big, ugly Black Drum. We arrived at the Yacht Basin around 10:30 AM to sunny, clear skies, about 72 degrees and winds from the south around 5-10 mph. The clear skies turned to fog around noon and lasted for several hours. When we decided to leave a little early around 4:30 PM, we had to navigate into the fog and cross the ship channel in very limited visibility using the trail on the GPS.

When we arrived at the boat cut at the North Jetty, I checked and the water temp had warmed two degrees to 65 from the prior weekend. That must have been part of the trigger needed to get the Black Drum biting. We caught 9 Black Drum on the trip and lost two due to broken lines. We kept one drum that was 28 inches and 9 pounds and Randy had the largest drum coming in at 42 inches and 42 pounds. The Black Drum run is definitely on for 2008, and should last a few more weeks if this year tracks with last year. We saw multiple boats hooked up on Saturday and Sunday, and we left them biting under a strong incoming tide near the boat cut on Sunday.

Randy's 42 Pound Black Drum