The discussion about red drum in another thread reminded me about something that happened a dozen or so years ago.
A group of us were night fishing on the outer banks, around the end of May 1998 or 1999. Mostly it was an excuse to have a bonfire and drink beer, but we had poles in the water. My friend lives in NC and fishes there a lot, and he wanted to go for a red drum. He cast pretty far out in the surf and stuck it in a sand spike, a few other rods were in but not as deep. Everyone was standing around talking when someone said “hey, what happened to that pole?” Sure enough, one was missing from a spike and was nowhere to be seen. Someone grabbed one of the other rods and ran up the beach, it was desperation but he snagged something.
That rod was passed off to the most experienced fisherman in the group, the guy from NC. He felt something on the other end and teased it in over the course of 20-30 minutes. By then, we could see something in the surf, and it looked like a fishing pole. He passed the first one off to someone else and went and got the other pole out of the surf. He could feel the fish on the other end. He tried to reel it in, but found that the tackle from the other pole was snagged in the reel of the pole with the fish on it. What to do?
He walked back and forth on the beach, keeping tension on the line. Someone found some nail clippers, and with a flashlight trained on the reel, she slowly clipped the tackle from the other rod out of the reel while he walked back and forth on the beach. Eventually she cleared it so he could start reeling it in. Another 20 minutes or so later, and he’d landed a ~40 lb red drum. We took a quick picture and set it loose in the surf.
This reminds of the story my dad tells about the 20 foot catfish that him and his friends caught back in the old country. It was supposedly so big that its tail was hanging off the back of a flat bed truck. Pictures of this monstrous fish seem to have disappeared. I’m willing to bet if I ask him to tell the story again, the fish has grown to 30 feet by now. :o
Yeah I was in northern mn in boundary waters with boy scouts and I castes out my kindy rig with leech on it and as unwashed reeling it in the weight got stuck on sharp rocks so I left it bc dinner was ready and I was ping to deal with afterwards. So I came back to it and it had loosen itself up and I was cool. Well what loosened it was a large mouth bass no more then 3 inches long. Well the fish pulled out someline bc I had the torque set way low. So to get the line back in I threw the fish out line 20 feet and started reeling in and as soon as I started I hooked a decsent northern on the line I fought with it for couple of minutes before it jumped out of the water which pulled the hook out off the basses mouth. Which I was happy about bc I didn’t want the northern to begin with and it’s pretty illegal to use game fish to get other game fish in MN and if I would have gotten caught it would have a couple of thousand dollar fine.
“Did you know that in 1971 the North Carolina General Assembly designated red drum the state saltwater fish? The Tar Heel State is famous for its trophy-sized red drum that weigh in excess of 40 pounds, traditionally caught in the surf and sound between Oregon Inlet and Cape Lookout. In 1984, a giant red drum was caught off Hatteras Island that weighed 94 pounds, 2 ounces; aside from being the state record red drum, this is also a world record for all tackle. North Carolina has produced 10 out of 16 current world records for red drum.”
Despite my comment in a previous post, I often tag and release. On the same day I caught this 152# blue marlin I also tagged and released a short-nosed spearfish, estimated at around 40#, and another blue marlin that was about twice the size of the one pictured above.
We kept the one in the picture above because it fought itself to death. Marlin are famous for doing that. Inspite of trying to revive it for nearly an hour it died, so we kept it. I have its spear mounted and hanging above my desk.
Kona is famous for its sportfishing for good reason.
