Sunday, March 4, 2001

Bull Drum Running

David Sikes/Caller-Times

Sunset over Trainer’s Marina & Pier on the JFK Causeway draws a crowd during the annual spawning run of black drum. But generally, bull drum can be caught day or night well into March.

It was beyond breezy, the kind of day where you could easily lose your hat just standing on the dock.
   So why was I so eager to board a boat bound for the Land Cut?
   I was drawn by a primal drumbeat, calling me to abandon the antiseptic tools and techniques of a lure chucker for more basic bait and tackle.
   In other words, the drum run was on.
   So we bought a bag of dead shrimp and bounced our way south, hoping to hook a hawg or two.
   In the days previous, a friend had alerted me that the annual spawning migration of black drum had begun.
   "We caught 14 oversized bulls within a few hours," Noe Garza said about one of his trips to the Land Cut. "We fought one of them for 45 minutes. But we couldn't buy a keeper drum that morning."
   Coming or going?
   Biologists are not certain whether these stout transients of the Coastal Bend are coming or going, said Larry McEachron, who directs the Texas Parks and Wildlife Marine Lab in Rockport. All we know is they school up by the thousands each February and are mostly gone by the end of March.
   Great schools of black drum are concentrated off the coast of Louisiana, McEachron said. But there's no proof Texas' Gulf waters harbor similar stocks of these hardy bottom feeders, though it stands to reason they do.
   Drum, the smaller of which are considered excellent table fare, can live 20 to 30 years and reach lengths of 40 to 50 inches. Larger drum, which don't taste as good, can only be caught consistently in the Coastal Bend during February and March.
   Smaller ones, called butterfly drum, are silvery gray with black vertical bars, which fade with age. Larger drum, called bulls no matter their gender, are not a particularly attractive fish. They have swollen lips, barbels or whiskers on their chin and range in color from a murky golden hue to dirty blotchy gray.
   They are not prone to tail-dancing antics. The fight is more like reeling in a heavy log caught in a current. And rarely do they strike a lure. Nor do many drum see the inside of a taxidermy shop.
   Finding the drum
   But for many anglers, the bull drum run is their best opportunity to catch a really big fish without going offshore. For the next couple of weeks, traditionally anglers catch them off either Port Aransas jetty, off Port Aransas piers at Station Street and Charlie's Pasture, off the Humble Channel piers at Trainer's, Clems, Land & Sea, JFK and Cos Way, off Indian Point Pier and occasionally off either of the gulf piers. Just to name a few spots.
   Drum generally spawn near deep water. So the edges of channels can be as productive for anglers as the channels themselves. The stringers I saw this past weekend contained a wide range of sizes. Drum must be between 14 and 30 inches long to keep. The daily bag limit is 5.
   Release mortality seems to be low on the bulls. It helps that many anglers use circle hooks, which tend to catch in the fish's mouth rather than more deeply.
   Favorite baits include sea lice, crab and dead shrimp.
   When the run is complete, butterfly drum can be found alongside other game fish, in sandy flats and grass beds of the bays. Occasionally schooling drum will strike a well-placed fly.
   Generally, Texas drum reach reproductive maturity at age 5, when they're about 20 inches long. But for some unexplained reason, drum in the Baffin Bay area mature in two or three years.
   A possible explanation is that the heavy commercial and recreational fishing pressure in Baffin has resulted in the evolutionary change, McEachron said.
   At any rate, trot liners and anglers here have not adversely impacted our drum stocks since gillnets were outlawed in the late 1980s, McEachron said.
   Hits and misses
   Evidence of healthy drum stocks was obvious throughout the Coastal Bend this week. Bulletin boards, walls and counter tops at local marinas and bait shops held fresh snapshots that captured the pride and excitement this fishery brings.
   Novice angler Danielle Converse discovered the hard way that light tackle is no match for a determined bull drum. Her 12-pound test line snapped when a hardy bull dashed under Trainer's Pier.
   On a brighter note, shining through the grimace on Bonita Herrington's face, I recognized joy as she struggled to carry a prize bull to be photographed at Trainer's.
   "This is my second one today," she grunted as she passed me, trying to get a better grip on the heavy fish.
   "Thirty-five and a half inches," she said later after releasing her second bull of the day.
   Back on the pier, Herrington's husband could barely lift a stringer with the couple's impressive day's catch. The Humble Channel was my last stop of my weekend drum research.
   That morning, several fishing buddies delivered on a promise to show me what the ship channel near Ingleside held in the way of February drum. We caught several bulls in the 35- to 40-inch range that I guess would have tipped the scales at better than 40 pounds.
   I learned something new that morning. Early on, Pat Hunt asked Don Miller if he had checked the day's ship schedule. He had not.
   It's rare when two fishing guides agree. But both men said drum seem to bite along the Ship Channel when ships pass. And they proved it twice.
   I'm not sure why this is, except that maybe deep-draft vessels cause fish to move onto the channel edges where our baits were. I recall a similar dynamic on the Bayou Teche years ago. The catfish bite seemed to get better just before, during and after a barge passed.
   Let me know if this works for you.
   I've avoided this next topic long enough. It's time to come clean about my trip to the Land Cut, as embarrassing as that may be.
   Here goes. Stan Willson and I traveled 90 miles round trip only to hook and lose a single big ugly drum. More embarrassing than this, we spent the rest of the day wrestling the boat in a 30-mph wind and cursing hardheads, about 50 of them, and one stingray.
   My fingers still smell of dead shrimp.
   But I didn't lose my hat.