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I had a good day today. I'm hoping my slump is fading away. After I became convinced there were a decent number of fish where I set up (and after I had an upper slot fish on the stringer) I decided to experiment with various colors, sounds and retrieval speeds. Out of the five drum I landed four were top water. Each of those four were on different colors and a few were different pitch rattles. I also varied the retrieve from my habitual quick twitch to a wider and slightly slower "walk". I have to eat my words I spoke in another thread because the slow/wide retrieval seemed to do just as well as the one I always use. Far from a scientific study but good enough to make me feel the retrieve doesn't matter so long as the plug is moving. One thing I'll say for me personally is the the twitch I use takes less effort and seems to keep the line laid down on the spool better. That's just me though.
There is one photo with two drum in the net. This same thing happened to me last year. I got the first fish which was the smaller one on top and netted it. I was staring at it trying to decide if I should put it on the stringer or gamble on getting another larger one. I had a dead stick out with a pin fish on a Carolina rig and while I was pondering my dinner choices it took off. Turned out to be the biggest one of the day at 25" and getting it into the already occupied net was a lot of fun. Getting the two fish out wasn't too bad but I'm so glad that I crush the barbs on the hooks because they would have been a total pain to get out of the net otherwise. A couple of other interesting things I took notice of were that all the fish I caught were males??? They all made the drum sound and they all were much more copper color than "normal". Really pretty fish. I read that the males make this color change during spawning so I guess that's what they are up to. I lost as many as I landed but I only lost one other on top. The others I lost with the dead stick and I can attribute that to using a hook that was too small. I had a #1 circle hook on the bottom because I only had some small pin fish and some small shrimp. I've read a lot from people that swear that pin fish are the best live bait for red drum but until today I have never gotten a single drum using pin fish. I will use them again on the dead stick when I can. Lastly the most interesting thing I noticed was what was in the stomach of the drum I kept. It had the same thing that one I cleaned a couple of days ago had in it which was a mud crab. Not a fiddler but the crab with the large bulky claws. This tells me they are feeding of the bottom. My dead stick got rung up every time I had it out until I ran out of bait. My last little shrimp got eaten by a 6" pin fish. I put that thing on a popping cork and clipped it's tail plus put a gash in its back. I was so sure I huge drum was going to eat it but the tide went slack so I headed in.
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There is one photo with two drum in the net. This same thing happened to me last year. I got the first fish which was the smaller one on top and netted it. I was staring at it trying to decide if I should put it on the stringer or gamble on getting another larger one. I had a dead stick out with a pin fish on a Carolina rig and while I was pondering my dinner choices it took off. Turned out to be the biggest one of the day at 25" and getting it into the already occupied net was a lot of fun. Getting the two fish out wasn't too bad but I'm so glad that I crush the barbs on the hooks because they would have been a total pain to get out of the net otherwise. A couple of other interesting things I took notice of were that all the fish I caught were males??? They all made the drum sound and they all were much more copper color than "normal". Really pretty fish. I read that the males make this color change during spawning so I guess that's what they are up to. I lost as many as I landed but I only lost one other on top. The others I lost with the dead stick and I can attribute that to using a hook that was too small. I had a #1 circle hook on the bottom because I only had some small pin fish and some small shrimp. I've read a lot from people that swear that pin fish are the best live bait for red drum but until today I have never gotten a single drum using pin fish. I will use them again on the dead stick when I can. Lastly the most interesting thing I noticed was what was in the stomach of the drum I kept. It had the same thing that one I cleaned a couple of days ago had in it which was a mud crab. Not a fiddler but the crab with the large bulky claws. This tells me they are feeding of the bottom. My dead stick got rung up every time I had it out until I ran out of bait. My last little shrimp got eaten by a 6" pin fish. I put that thing on a popping cork and clipped it's tail plus put a gash in its back. I was so sure I huge drum was going to eat it but the tide went slack so I headed in.
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