Black Drum in Big Schools—Hot Summer Fishing

Rich Gidrey fished the Redfish Trail in a Tournament on Saturday that started in South Padre island.  They ran North to the Upper Laguna Madre area searching for schools of redfish in the flats.   They caught their two fish and made the long 2 hour run back south for the weigh-in.  That’s a picture of Rich and Sam in their big Mako bay boat.

On Sunday, Rich, Tony D ( Our Cameraman) and I Fished the Upper Laguna Madre area in search of some rod bending action and in search of a new fishing show in HD.

We picked up some bait at Billings Bait Stand in Corpus Christi and headed south.  We knew that schooling redfish were in the area so we kicked the Evinrude 250 hp in the tail and began to cover water.  The day proved to be a hot day on the water.  We did not have any wind for almost 4 hours and we were in the sauna.  Non-the-less, we stayed on the hunt.  We caught a few trout, 16 in to 20 in but nothing to write home about.  The slack wind made is tough fishing.  When you have no wind, the fish can see you just as easy as you can see them.  

Covering water is always critical to find fish that are feeding.  I never stay in one area more that 15 minutes.  Stay on the hunt.

 Anglers Note:

The big finish that we were looking for today came in the form of Schools of Black Drum and a few Redfish in the flats.  I am talking 500+ Black Drum in mega schools.  We located these massive schools by looking for choppy water or nervous water where there were no boat wakes or wind to cause such a messed up looking water.   We saw a large area of choppy water as we ran around in the flats and that proved to be just what we were looking for.  We found that free hooking with a chunk of shrimp proved to be most effective.  We were however able to catch them on hooks tipped with a chunk of soft plastic, preferable a bright orange or charturce color.  

As I always say, knowledge is power on the water.

We shot this show on our Sony Z7-U HD camera and we will air it in our new season soon.

Thanks for your time today and I’ll see you in the Outdoors.

Dave